2011

2011 (MMXI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2011th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 11th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 2nd year of the 2010s decade.

The most notable event of the year was the Arab Spring that involved the killing of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya as part of a series of protests and government overthrows that swept through the Middle East.

In 2011, the nation of Samoa only had 364 days as it moved across the International Date Line skipping December 30, 2011; it is now 24 hours ahead of American Samoa.^[2]^[3]

From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrates the independence of South Sudan, the world's newest country; the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastates Eastern Japan and kills nearly 20,000 people; Minecraft is released and goes on to become the best-selling video game; the 2011 Norway attacks mark the rise of white supremacist terrorism across the west; The U.S. national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room to monitor the progress of Operation Neptune Spear that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden; Anti-government protests called the Arab Spring arose in 2010–2011, and as a result, many governments were overthrown in the Middle East and Northern Africa.