No. 4: Atlantis shuttle launch
The coolest photo of the space shuttle Atlantis launch wasn’t taken by NASA but by high school graduate Ryan Graff, who snapped this pic from his window seat on a flight from Baltimore to Miami on July 8, 2011. The image quickly went viral once Ryan’s brother, Chad, uploaded it…
Top Viral Photos of 2011
With millions of images being shared on the Internet every day, it takes a certain measure of magic to become a viral hit. We always keep one finger on the Web pulse (more than a quarter of Facebook’s Most Shared Articles in 2011 came from Yahoo!), so now we bring…
Earthquake bride
Now better known as the Earthquake Bride, Valeriya Shevchenko was snapped running from a courthouse in lower Manhattan, New York, on August 23, 2011. Clutching her cell phone and a bouquet, the bride-to-be was frantically searching for her fiance after a 5.9 magnitude earthquake rattled Virginia and surrounding regions. Thankfully,…
No. 10: John Feal (9/11)
To lay eyes on John Feal is to know he was marked by September 11. His blue shirt displays the Statue of Liberty in front of the American flag. Like the red bracelet and ring he’s wearing, it bears the name of a September 11-related foundation that he started. His…
No. 9: Texas Volunteer Firefighters
It takes three things to start a fire: heat, fuel, and oxygen. In Texas, it usually takes one thing to put out that blaze: the heroism of volunteer firefighters. More than 70% of U.S. firefighters are volunteers, and 30,000 of these brave men and women protect the Lone Star state,…
No. 8: Mohamed Bouazizi
Mohamed Bouazizi had to make a living. His father had died of heart failure when Mohamed was 3 years old, and his stepfather wasn’t strong. Bouazizi had a high school education but stopped short of graduating because there was no money for his schooling. Instead, at 19, he worked to…
No. 7: Fukushima 50
The world was on edge in the terrifying days following the Tohoku earthquake in Japan, as people watched the damaged Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant. Flashbacks to Three Mile Island’s threat and the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe rippled online. Even as people researched the far-reaching effects of radiation and how it…
No. 6: Dakota Meyer
On September 8, 2009, an Afghan patrol and its American trainers entered Ganjgal Village and were ambushed by more than 50 Taliban insurgents. Bullets rained down from the surrounding mountains. A mile away, then Corporal Dakota Meyer heard the attack and requests for help over the radio. Along with Staff…
No. 5: Lara Logan
On the night of February 11, 2011, more than 100,000 revelers filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate the ousting of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Among them was seasoned war reporter and CBS News’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, Lara Logan, who was covering the rapidly changing situation in the deteriorating police…
No. 4: Red Cross Volunteers
Mike Meyer heard the call several times during 2011. He answered five times. Had it not been for personal conflicts, he would have been there more. The 57-year-old retired General Motors worker from Mayville, Michigan, is one of thousands of American Red Cross volunteers who were deployed to a constant…