2014: The year in pictures

January 1: Couples kiss in New York's Times Square to ring in the new year.

January 6: Ice builds up along Lake Michigan at Chicago's North Avenue Beach. Chicago hit a low temperature of 16 below zero.

January 6: A cornfield in Karo, Indonesia, is covered with volcanic ash following the eruption of Mount Sinabung. See other recently active volcanoes

January 12: An ostrich runs by destroyed buildings in Bentiu, South Sudan, after government forces retook the provincial capital from rebel forces. After decades of war, South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011, making it the world's youngest nation. Since then, South Sudan has become embroiled in its own internal conflict.

January 18: A large crowd in Mumbai, India, joins a funeral procession for Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, the head of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. Police say a predawn stampede killed more than a dozen people as tens of thousands gathered to mourn the death of the Muslim spiritual leader. Burhanuddin died a day earlier at the age of 102.

January 23: A trail of destruction is seen behind a boulder after a landslide in Ronchi di Termeno, Italy. The boulder missed the farmhouse at right but destroyed a barn before stopping in a vineyard. According to reports, the family living at the house was unharmed.

January 31: Refugees at the besieged al-Yarmouk camp, south of Damascus, Syria, wait to receive food distributed by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. Millions of people have either fled Syria or become displaced because of the civil war there.

February 1: Precious Adams, left, waits for her results after performing at the final of the Prix de Lausanne, an international dance competition in Lausanne, Switzerland. Adams was one of the prize winners, earning an apprenticeship with the English National Ballet.

February 14: A man in Aleppo, Syria, holds a baby who survived what activists say was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The United Nations estimates more than 190,000 people have been killed in Syria since an uprising in March 2011 spiraled into civil war.

February 18: Britain's Prince Charles wears a traditional Saudi uniform as he attends the Janadriyah culture festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

February 20: Protesters in Kiev, Ukraine, catch fire as they stand behind burning barricades during clashes with police. Kiev's Independence Square had been the center of anti-government protests since November 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych reversed a decision on a trade deal with the European Union and instead turned toward Russia.

February 20: Pamela Rauseo performs CPR on her 5-month-old nephew, Sebastian de la Cruz, after pulling over on the side of a Miami highway. She was stuck in traffic when the infant stopped breathing. Sebastian was taken to the hospital in critical condition, but he survived.

February 23: A leopard leaps near a furniture market in the Degumpur area of Meerut, India. The big cat sparked panic in the city when it strayed inside a hospital, a cinema and an apartment block, an official said.

February 26: Riot police in Ankara, Turkey, disperse demonstrators trying to march to Parliament to protest Turkey's ruling party. Audio recordings that sounded like Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan giving his son money-laundering tips over the phone became a social media rage that poured out into the streets. Erdogan denounced the recordings, calling them "immoral edited material."

February 27: Protesters run from tear gas fired by the Venezuelan National Guard during an anti-government demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela. For months, protesters unhappy with Venezuela's economy and rising crime clashed with security forces.

March 2: A python begins to swallow a crocodile at Lake Moondarra in Queensland, Australia. The snake, thought to be about 10 feet long, constricted the crocodile to death before dragging it to shore and eating it whole in front of a shocked crowd of onlookers

March 2: A baby has his hair cut in Hefei, China. Many in China believe it is good luck to have your hair cut on the second day of the second lunar month, known in Chinese as Er Yue Er, or "a time for the dragon to raise its head."

March 2: Host Ellen DeGeneres takes a moment to orchestrate a selfie with a group of movie stars at the Academy Awards ceremony. Actor Bradley Cooper, seen in the foreground, was holding the phone at the time. "If only Bradley's arm was longer," DeGeneres tweeted. "Best photo ever." It became the most retweeted post of all time. See the year in selfies.

March 7: Debris covers a street in Aleppo, Syria, after a reported airstrike by Syrian government forces.

March 9: The Northern Lights appear over snow-covered mountains in Iceland.

March 14: A Palestinian man and a member of Israel's security forces take pictures of each other after a demonstration in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.

March 17: Conservators at Egypt's Grand Museum, just outside of Cairo, clean a female mummy that dates to the Pharaonic Late Period between 712-323 B.C.

March 18: Tibetan Buddhist monks holding ceremonial scarfs stand in line to welcome the Dalai Lama as he arrives at a monastery in Shimla, India.

March 21: A Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star flies past the Smoke-N-Thunder jet car during a race between the two at the Los Angeles County Air Show.

March 31: South Korean watercraft travel through smoke screens during a military exercise with U.S. forces in Pohang, South Korea.

April 2: Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Petry stands during the Pledge of Allegiance at a ceremony held at the Capitol in Olympia, Washington. The ceremony honored Petry and other Medal of Honor recipients from Washington state. Petry lost his hand in 2008 when he was throwing an enemy grenade away from his fellow soldiers during combat in Afghanistan.

April 6: Children pray at a Catholic church in Kigali, Rwanda. Twenty years ago, mass killings began in Rwanda. An estimated 800,000 civilians, mostly from the Tutsi ethnic group, were murdered over a period of about 100 days.

April 8: Lawmakers scuffle during a parliament session in Kiev, Ukraine. The fight broke out when Petr Simonenko, the leader of the Communist Party, began to say lawmakers should listen to the demands of eastern Ukraine. He defended demonstrators who seized local government buildings, saying they are not doing anything different from what the interim government had done. He also accused "nationalists" of starting the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

April 8: An artist dressed as the Hindu goddess Kali participates in a procession to celebrate the Ram Navami festival in Allahabad, India.

April 10: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ducks after a woman hurled a shoe at her during a speech in Las Vegas. The Secret Service took the woman into custody.

April 14: The door through which Oscar Pistorius fatally shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, is used as evidence during his murder trial in Pretoria, South Africa. Pistorius, the first double-amputee runner to compete in the Olympics, was found guilty of culpable homicide -- the South African term for unintentionally, but unlawfully, killing a person. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

April 15: The parents of Abdollah Hosseinzadeh remove a noose from the neck of his convicted killer, a man identified only as Balal, before Balal was to be hanged in Noor, Iran. Balal killed Hosseinzadeh during a street fight in 2007, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency ISNA. But just seconds before Balal was to be hanged, he was forgiven by Hosseinzadeh's mother.

April 15: Boston University student Sebastian Filgueira-Gomez has tears in his eyes during a moment of silence for the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings. He was standing on Boston's Boylston Street, a block from the marathon's finish line.

April 16: A veterinary staff member of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program examines a 14-year-old male orangutan on Indonesia's Sumatra island. The orangutan was rescued a day earlier with air gun pellets embedded in his body. His species is considered critically endangered because of poaching and rapid destruction to its forest habitats.

April 18: A man accused of being a thief lies in pain after being attacked by a man with a machete and sticks in Bangui, Central African Republic. Foreign journalists intervened and stopped the beating as the crowd shouted, "He is a thief, he must die." Police arrived and took the man into custody. He was then taken to a hospital for treatment before being brought before a prosecuting officer.

April 25: A pro-Russian rebel poses for a picture inside a regional government building in Donetsk, Ukraine, on Friday, April 25. Fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels in the country has left more than 3,000 people dead since mid-April, according to the United Nations.

May 3: Youths from the Aboure tribe perform a warrior dance as they take part in a parade on the last day of the Popo carnival in Bonoua, Ivory Coast. This year's festival promoted national reconciliation.

May 9: Doctors hold Jenna and Jillian Thistlewaite, twin girls born in Akron, Ohio. The girls were born holding hands, and they are monoamniotic or "mono mono" twins -- a pregnancy in which twins share the same placenta and amniotic sac. Researchers say "mono mono" births happen once in every 10,000 births.

May 11: Sister Maricor from the Missionaries of Charity spends a moment with John, a 1-year-old with hydrocephalus, at an orphanage in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hydrocephalus is characterized by an excessive accumulation of fluid in the brain.

May 12: This image, taken from video shot by Boko Haram militants, allegedly shows the Nigerian schoolgirls that the group abducted in April. More than 200 girls were taken, sparking a global outcry. The Islamist militant group, whose name means "Western education is sin," later said it sold most of the girls into slavery.

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May 14: Astronaut Koichi Wakata is carried to a medical tent just minutes after he and two others landed in Kazahkstan on their return to Earth. Wakata, Mikhail Tyurin and Rick Mastracchio spent more than six months aboard the International Space Station

May 14: The body of an illegal migrant lies on the shore of al-Qarboli, Libya. Libyan officials said at least 40 people died and around 50 were rescued when a boat carrying mostly sub-Saharan migrants sank off the coast of Tripoli on May 11.

May 14: Yusuf Yerkel, an aide to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, kicks a person who is being wrestled to the ground by two police officers during protests in Soma, Turkey. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets across Turkey following a deadly mine fire that occurred near Soma on May 13.

May 19: Researcher Adrian Lister looks at Lyuba, a baby woolly mammoth considered to the most complete example of the species ever found, at the Natural History Museum in London. Lyuba, which means "love" in Russian, was found frozen in clay and mud in Siberia in 2007. She is estimated to have died about 42,000 years ago.

May 20: This picture, taken from security camera video, shows a knife-wielding attacker going on a rampage at a primary school in Macheng, China. Eight students were injured in the attack, according to the South China Morning Post.

May 20: A woman flees as a riot police officer beats her with a baton in Nairobi, Kenya. Hundreds of Nairobi University students took to the streets and faced riot police as they protested against a proposed increase in school fees.

May 26: An Asiatic cheetah hunts a rabbit at the Miandasht Wildlife Refuge in Jajarm, Iran. Iran is conducting a campaign to save the Asiatic cheetah, a species that is dwindling in the region.

June 6: Members of a hardline Sikh group clash with guards of the Golden Temple, the religion's holiest shrine, in Amritsar, India. Half a dozen people were wounded, officials said.

June 13: Smoke rises from a house that was deliberately set on fire by building crews near Lake Whitney in Texas. The house was set on fire after part of the ground underneath it collapsed into the lake.

June 17: Boys at a slum on the outskirts of Brasilia, Brazil, watch a World Cup soccer match between Brazil and Mexico. Brazil hosted this year's World Cup, although there were protests over whether the money spent on the tournament would have been better used elsewhere.

June 19: Members of Iraq's Special Operations Forces take their positions during clashes with the ISIS militant group Thursday, June 19, in Ramadi, Iraq. ISIS has been advancing in Iraq and Syria as it seeks to create an Islamic caliphate in the region.

June 24: NASA releases a selfie of the Mars rover Curiosity. The selfie, a composite of dozens of images captured in April and May, celebrated a full Martian year -- 687 days -- since the rover's touchdown on the Red Planet.

July 12: Central American migrants climb on a train in Ixtepec, Mexico, during their journey toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Days later, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that he would deploy up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the border, where tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors have crossed into the United States this year.

July 12: People run for shelter during a hailstorm at the Ob River in Novosibirsk, Russia

July 17: A New York City police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, puts Eric Garner in a chokehold for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally. During the encounter, which was caught on video, Garner is heard telling police he could not breathe. Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic, died en route to the hospital. After a grand jury decided in December not to indict the police officer, protests erupted in several major U.S. cities.

July 18: A rose lies on a plastic sheet covering a victim of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over war-torn eastern Ukraine. All 298 people aboard the flight were killed. Several Western nations and the Ukrainian government have accused pro-Russian rebels of shooting down the plane with a missile. Rebel leaders and the Russian government have disputed the claims.

July 21: People climb onto window ledges to try to avoid a bull during the Toro de Cuerda festival in Grazalema, Spain. During the festival, a long rope restrains the bull as it runs through the village's streets.

July 25: Zhang Hangjun, 20, drinks water from a bowl as he has a meal in Shenyang, China. Zhang and his twin brother were diagnosed with cerebral palsy after they were born. Zhang, who weighs about 550 pounds, spends most of his time in bed as the family is unable to afford medical treatment, local media reported.

July 29: Smoke rises in Gaza City after Israeli airstrikes. Israel launched a ground operation in Gaza after a 10-day campaign of airstrikes failed to halt relentless Hamas rocket fire on Israeli cities. After more than seven weeks of heavy fighting, Israel and Hamas agreed to an open-ended ceasefire that put off dealing with core long-term issues.

August 3: Three men found guilty by a Somali military court of killing civilians and masterminding an attack on the presidential palace are tied to poles shortly before they were executed by a firing squad in Mogadishu, Somalia. The three were members of the militant group Al-Shabaab.

August 6: An elephant relieves an itch on a small car in South Africa's Pilanesberg National Park. The two passengers in the car were shaken up but not injured.

August 11: Police wearing riot gear confront a man during protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Some protests in the city turned into clashes between angry citizens and police after Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, on August 9.

August 12: Following the death of actor Robin Williams, people photograph his handprints and footprints at TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. Williams, a brilliant shapeshifter who could channel his frenetic energy into delightful comic characters like "Mrs. Doubtfire" or harness it into richly nuanced work like his Oscar-winning turn in "Good Will Hunting," committed suicide at his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was 63.

August 13: People run as a high wave hits the Qiantang River bank in Hangzhou, China.

August 19: Workers clean the south face of Big Ben, the famous landmark at London's Palace of Westminster.

August 29: Mount Tavurvur erupts in Papua New Guinea. The volcano spewed a thick tower of ash that reached as high as 60,000 feet above sea level.

September 8: Former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, left, and George W. Bush laugh on stage during an event at the Newseum in Washington. The event was for a new leadership program they were launching, but they also joked with and about each other, told stories about their relationship and even offered commentary about the number of selfies each is asked to take.

September 9: A couple kiss during a perigee moon, also known as a "supermoon," as it rises in the sky in Sydney. The phenomenon occurs when the moon becomes full on the same day as its perigee -- the point in the moon's orbit when it is closest to Earth.

September 15: A doctor in Zhumadian, China, performs surgery on a man who had part of an aluminum-alloy fence pierce his body during a car accident. The man survived after the piece of fence was surgically removed.

September 19: A U.S. Secret Service agent hurries people to evacuate the White House complex moments after a security breach. President Barack Obama and his family were not at home when an intruder scaled the fence and entered the White House, but a congressional inquiry uncovered other security lapses this year and led to the resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson.

September 22: Amid the Ebola scare in West Africa, a school official in Lagos, Nigeria, takes a student's temperature with an infrared laser thermometer. Health officials say the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the deadliest ever. More than 5,600 people have died there, according to the World Health Organization.

September 26: Actor George Clooney, right, and his fiancee, lawyer Amal Alamuddin, arrive in Venice, Italy, on Friday, September 26. The two were married that weekend in a private ceremony attended by some of their celebrity friends. At left is Rande Gerber, husband of model Cindy Crawford.

September 28: Firefighters and members of Japan's military conduct a rescue operation at a cabin near the peak of Mount Ontake. Dozens of people were killed when the volcano erupted.

September 28: Riot police use pepper spray as they clash with pro-democracy protesters outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong. Demonstrations began in response to China's decision to allow only Beijing-vetted candidates to stand in the city's 2017 election for chief executive. Protesters say Beijing has gone back on its pledge to allow universal suffrage in Hong Kong, which was promised "a high degree of autonomy" when it was handed back to China by Britain in 1997. The umbrella has become the defining image of the protest movement, used to shield protesters from tear gas and the elements.

October 7: A tank from the Indonesian Marine Corps fires projectiles in Surabaya, Indonesia, for the military's 69th anniversary.

October 10: Actress Angelina Jolie, right, is presented with an honorary damehood by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at London's Buckingham Palace. Jolie was recognized for her campaign to end sexual violence in war zones. See more photos of Jolie's life and career

October 17: People peer into a bedroom as an Ebola victim's body awaits a burial team in Monrovia, Liberia.

October 19: Pyotr Pavlensky cuts off a part of his earlobe while sitting on a wall enclosing the Serbsky Center, a psychiatric hospital in Moscow. Pavlensky was protesting what he said was the use of forensic psychiatry for politically motivated purposes. He said he cut off part of his earlobe to demonstrate how authorities could "cut off" an unwanted individual from society.

October 21: An aerial view from a hot-air balloon shows camels walking in Margham, United Arab Emirates.

October 23: ISIS militants stand near the site of an airstrike near the Turkey-Syria border. The United States and several Arab nations have been bombing ISIS targets to take out the group's ability to command, train and resupply its fighters.

October 29: Young activist Malala Yousafsai attends an award ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, before receiving the World's Children Prize for the Rights of the Child. Yousafzai, 17, also received the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Two years ago, she was shot in the head by the Taliban for her efforts to promote education for girls in Pakistan. Since then, after recovering from surgery, she has taken her campaign to the world stage.

November 6: Starlings fly near the town of Gretna, Scotland. The birds visit the area twice a year, in February and November.

November 7: Visitors view the ceramic poppy installation at the Tower of London. Thousands of ceramic poppies were installed in the dry moat surrounding the tower to mark the 100th anniversary of World War I. There were 888,246 poppies, one for each British military member that died during the war. The installation, called "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red," was created by artist Paul Cummins.

November 13: A handout photo provided by the European Space Agency shows the surface of the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet as seen from the Philae lander that landed on the comet's surface. Philae became the first manmade craft to ever land on a comet. It is a miniature laboratory that will gather data on the comet, which is about 310 million miles from Earth.

November 18: Men look at bullet holes on the main window of a Jerusalem synagogue that was attacked by two Palestinian men. Four worshippers and a police officer were killed and several others were wounded in the deadliest terror attack in Jerusalem since 2008.

November 24: A protester in Ferguson, Missouri, stands in front of police vehicles with his hands up. A grand jury's decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown prompted new waves of protests in Ferguson and across the country.

November 25: Police Sgt. Bret Barnum hugs 12-year-old Devonte Hart at a Portland, Oregon, rally showing support for the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

December 4 :NASA's Orion spacecraft is mounted atop a rocket Thursday, December 4, at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch of Orion -- a craft designed to eventually explore deep space -- is to be one of NASA's biggest moments since the shuttle era ended in 2011.

December 3: Demonstrators march past New York's Radio City Music Hall to protest a grand jury's decision not to bring criminal charges against New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo. Pantaleo was the officer who put Eric Garner in a chokehold in July for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally. Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic, died en route to the hospital

December 7: Typhoon Hagupit. More than half a million people sought shelter across the Philippines as authorities stepped up preparation efforts ahead of the storm.

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NASA's Orion spacecraft, atop a Delta 4-Heavy rocket, lifts off on its first unmanned orbital test flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday, December 5. NASA hopes Orion will usher in a new era: eventual human exploration of deep space.

cast 2014: The year in pictures

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