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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 year marked the start of a series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, and in some cases sparking civil wars such as the Syrian civil war and the first Libyan civil war, the former still ongoing.
U.S. marines killed Al-Qaeda leader and terrorist Osama bin Laden in his compound in Pakistan on May 2. The Curiosity rover, which was to land on Mars in August of the following year, launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26. In December, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who had been the supreme leader of North Korea since the death of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994, died while traveling by train to a place outside Pyongyang. He was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Un.
2011 was designated as:
- International Year of Forests
- International Year of Chemistry[1]
- International Year for People of African Descent
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]
