With the 24-hour news cycle constantly spewing into the ether like rants from Donald Trump’s Twitter, we’ve racked up quite a lot of non-stop news coverage over the last decade — 87, 600 hours to be exact. Multiply that by all the media outlets in America and it’s not shocking that we miss the odd headline or two. But what about the biggest stories of the 2010s? These headline-grabbers from the past 10 years were so blabbed about, it’s incredible that we’ve already forgotten every single one of them.
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10 news stories from the past decade
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10. The Icelandic Volcano Eruption: 2010
Millions of people across Europe were stranded for a solid week when the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted, sending thick plumes of smoke into the sky. There have been so many extreme weather events since then we've totally lost track. File under forgotten.
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9. Anthony Weiner's Long, Hard Road to a Sizable Collection of Dick Pics: 2011
Does anybody remember Anthony's wiener? No? Good. While the story was arguably pretty big at the time, we've definitely seen bigger.
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8. The Baseball Steroids Scandal: 2010
Voted the most-read story of 2010 by a major news poll, the scandal that rocked baseball was quickly forgotten when sports pundits declared that everyone was doing it, so who cares? We have to agree. Baseball is just an excuse to chug beer and eat hot dogs anyway.
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7. Ryan Lochte Pulls a Jessie Smollett at the Olympic Games in Rio: 2016
At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte claimed he had been robbed at gunpoint by two Brazilian nationals. Turns out he was just lying to cover up damage he caused to a local gas station while drunk. Gold medal for commitment. The man knows how to stay wet.
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6. Brock Turner: 2016
Here's Brock Turner unable to find his way out of prison. This bright young man may have inadvertently kickstarted the #metoo movement when his highly publicized crime yielded a victim-blaming judgement that galvanized the public. But the ensuing avalanche (including many higher profile indictments), buried this once ubiquitous headline.
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5. Mitt Romney Doesn't Care About Poor People: 2012
This Mormon raised in Mexico built his reputation as a businessman who liquidated successful companies for personal profit. In 2012, after he'd won the Republican nomination for POTUS, a videotape leaked of him telling wealthy donors that he didn't care about poor people. The story killed his campaign and forced him into the dustbin of American memories where failed candidates go to write autobiographies no one reads.
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4. The End of the World: 2012
Twelve years after the Y2K craze, Americans again found ourselves convinced that the world was ending. Thanks to the Mayan calendar, the most talked about story of the year was if and how the apocalypse would destroy us all. End times are fond times.
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3. Zombie Bath Salts: 2012
More fuel was added to the Mayan apocalypse theory when people in Florida started turning into zombies. But then we remembered it was Florida and it all made sense.
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2. Occupy Wall Street: 2010
In 2010, when Goldman Sachs was fined $550 million for their actions in the 2008 financial collapse, they reported earnings of $13.39 billion. Outraged by the discrepancy, protesters flocked to Wall Street for a months-long boycott of the entire financial system. While the movement morphed into various groups like Berners, their original demands were never satisfied and have somehow ceased to occupy our collective consciousness.
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1. Dakota Access Pipeline: 2016
The tale of an oil conglomerate building a pipeline on sacred land was heavily reported for months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Images of police brutality and corporate greed enraged citizens around the world. Three years later, many of the protesters are still in jail while the pipeline continues to flow (leaks and all), while reporting of the story has all but dried up.
