2014

The rise of ISIS became a major geopolitical crisis in 2014 after the group declared a global caliphate and launched devastating offensives in Iraq and Syria.

The Camp Speicher massacre in which the Islamic State murdered 1,566 Shia Iraqi Air Force cadets and the Fall of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, prompted a U.S led military intervention, which would later become a global effort.

ISIS would attract thousands of foreign fighters from across the world to join their military, drawn by their ideology and promises of establishing a global Islamic state.

The Euromaidan protests, a series of demonstrations in Ukraine, were triggered by President Viktor Yanukovych's sudden decision to pursue closer economic ties with Russia and his refusal to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, which culminated in the Revolution of Dignity in February.

Despite all these challenges, scientific achievement provided hope as India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars with its Mangalyaan mission, and the Rosetta spacecraft's Philae probe completed humanity's first landing on a comet.