In this post, featuring images from the last quarter of 2011, we remember a tumultuous year of change across the globe, the capture of Khadafi, the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the passing of Apple icon Steve Jobs, fire, famine, flood and protests. A memorable year, indeed. — Paula Nelson — Please see part 1 and part 2 from earlier.(EDITOR’S NOTE: We will not post a Big Picture on Monday, December 26, due to the Christmas Holiday )(51 photos total)
A defaced portrait of fugitive Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi in Tripoli on Sept. 1, 2011 as the fallen strongman vowed again not to surrender in a message broadcast on the 42nd anniversary of the coup which brought him to power. (Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images)
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An area destroyed by wildfire surrounds a water tower in Bastrop, Texas, Sept. 7, 2011 (Eric Gay/Associated Press) #
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The “Tribute in Light” shines above lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and One World Trade Center in New York. 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. (Mark Lennihan/Associated Press) #
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Nurunnaha Miah touches her son’s name, engraved on the north pool at the National September 11 Memorial, during a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the attacks at the World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2011. (Mary Altaffer/Associated Press) #
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Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, shows a copy of the letter requesting Palestine’s full admission to the UN as a sovereign state during the United Nations General Assembly, September 23, 2011 at UN headquarters in New York. The Palestinian leader won huge applause and a standing ovation from some of the assembly as he entered the hall shortly after asking the UN to admit the state of Palestine. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Divers search the wreckage at a crash site near Yaroslavl, on the Volga River about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Moscow. Investigators searched for flight recorders in the shattered remains of an airliner that crashed, killing 43 people including most of one of Russia’s premier hockey teams. (Maxim Shipenkov/Associated Press) #
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Belarus hockey players place candles in front of the portraits of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team members in Minsk, September 8, 2011, during a ceremony to commemorate the members of Russia’s top ice hockey team, who were among the 43 people killed in a plane crash on September 7. (Maxim Guchek/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak lies on a stretcher as he is wheeled into a courtroom in Cairo, September 7, 2011. Mubarak’s trial resumed off camera with witnesses giving testimony to try to determine who gave the orders for killing of hundreds of protesters in the revolt that ousted Egypt’s veteran president. (AFP/Getty Images) #
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Thai motorists travel through a flooded street during a heavy monsoon downpour in Bangkok. Dozens of people have died in northern Thailand over the past few weeks in floods that have also affected over a million people, Sept. 3, 2011. (Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images) #
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France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, National Transitional Council (NTC) head Mustafa Abdel Jalil and Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron join hands in Benghazi, Sept. 15, 2011. President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron travel to Libya, making stops in Tripoli and Benghazi, the first visit by foreign leaders since the toppling of the former regime. (Philippe Wojazer/AFP/Getty Images) #
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A policeman rushes to extinguish Apostolos Polyzonis, who set himself alight outside a bank branch in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, Sept. 16, 2011 while protesting against government, banks and political parties. The 55-year old man has attempted self-immolation before, two-years ago, over financial problems. The man was hospitalized with non life-threatening burns. (Nontas Stylianidis/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Evansville, Indiana fire Capt., Don Spindler, carries a young girl out of a burning apartment. (Jason Clark/The Evansville Courier & Press, Jason Clark) #
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Joseph Mwangi, 34, sits in a state of shock after discovering the charred remains of two of his children, at the scene of a fuel explosion in Nairobi, Kenya. A leaking gasoline pipeline in Kenya’s capital exploded, turning part of a slum into an inferno in which scores of people were killed and more than 100 hurt, Sept. 12, 2001. (Ben Curtis/Associated Press) #
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Alleged renegade UBS trader Kweku Adoboli is taken away in a security van flanked by police officers after appearing at the City of London Magistrates Court in London. The alleged renegade trader accused of losing Swiss bank UBS about $2 billion in unauthorized trading was ordered held in prison custody charged with fraud and false accounting. (Matt Dunham/Associated Press) #
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A severely wounded US Marine hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) is carried by his comrades to a medevac helicopter of U.S. Army’s Task Force Lift “Dust Off”, Charlie Company 1-171 Aviation Regiment to be airlifted in Helmand province, Oct. 31, 2011. The Marine who was hit by an IED lost both his legs and fights for his life. All foreign combat troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and will require the Afghan army and police to play an ever-greater role in fighting the Taliban insurgency. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images) #
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National Transitional Council fighters fire against Muammar Khadafi troops in the town of Sirte, Oct. 10, 2011, as they move in against the strongman’s remaining diehards. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images) #
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A Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighter looks through a large concrete pipe where ousted Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi was allegedly captured. A dead loyalist gunman lies in the foreground, in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte, Oct. 20, 2011. Arabic graffiti in blue reads: “This is the place of Kadhafi, the rat.. God is the greatest.” (Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Libyans take pictures with their mobile phones of the body of Muammar Khadafi in Misrata, Oct. 20, 2011. The veteran strongman was killed as new regime forces crushed the last pocket of resistance in his hometown, Sirte. (Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Some 14,345 Chinese participants attempt to set a new Guinness World Record as they gather for a bath at a hot spring in southwest China’s Chongqing municipality. The former world record was 10,121 people having a hot spring bath at the same time in China’s Hubei province. (AFP/Getty Images) #
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Rescuers carry a two-week-old baby girl, Azra Karaduman, from the rubble of a collapsed building in Ercis, Turkey’s eastern province of Van, Oct. 25, 2011. Crowds cheered and applauded as 73-year-old Gulzade Karaduman was carried into an ambulance, hours after her tiny granddaughter Azra and then her daughter Seniha Karaduman were pulled free from the wreckage of the family home in the eastern town of Ercis. As the death toll reached 459 and the Red Crescent warned that hundreds or even thousands of people remained buried under the debris from Sunday’s quake, the triple rescue provided vital relief amid the otherwise grim task. (Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou embraces Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker (Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is at left) during a working session of the European Council at the Justus Lipsius building, EU headquarters in Brussels, Oct. 26, 2011. The European Commission called on eurozone leaders to deliver a “credible” response to the debt crisis at a crunch summit as they are scheduled to announce a plan to boost confidence in the eurozone after months of indecision and uncertainty. The EU is trying to prevent a full-blown Greek default and limit contagion within the eurozone. (Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images) #
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US First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks to members of the US Secret Service after touring the headquarters in Washington, DC, Oct. 5, 2011. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit salutes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives by helicopter at the Tel Nof airbase near Tel Aviv, Oct. 18, 2011 following his release after 5 years of Hamas captivity under a landmark Egyptian-mediated deal that will see Israel release a total of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. (AFP/Getty Images) #
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Partially-submerged vehicles sit stranded in floodwaters at a roundabout in the Thai ancient capital city of Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok, Oct. 16, 2011. Flood defenses protecting the Thai capital held up on Oct. 16, but the advancing waters that have swamped the inland still threaten to engulf Bangkok in a disaster that has claimed 300 lives. Thailand’s worst floods in decades have inundated huge swathes of the kingdom, swallowing homes and businesses, shutting down industry, and forcing tens of thousands of people to seek refuge in shelters. (Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images) #
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A Thai boy holds aloft banknotes while he swims in the floodwaters in Nonthaburi province, suburban Bangkok, Oct. 15, 2011. Thailand fought to hold back floodwaters flowing toward Bangkok as a spring tide hindered efforts to protect the city of 12 million people from the kingdom’s worst inundation in decades. (Parnchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/Getty Images) #
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A police officer tries to calm former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko as she reacts as Judge Rodion Kireyev of the Kiev Pechersky court reads the verdict to her, Oct. 11, 2011. Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in jail for abusing her powers in a 2009 gas deal with Russia, a verdict that is set to harm ties with the European Union. Kireyev said the 10-year contract for gas imports from Russia had sustained heavy losses for Ukraine and ruled that her actions were criminal. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Carnations are placed before a computer screen showing a portrait of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs at an Apple store in St. Petersburg, Russia, Oct. 6, 2011. Jobs, counted among the greatest American CEOs of his generation, died at the age of 56, after a long and highly public battle with cancer and other health issues. (Alexander Demianchuk/Reuters) #
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North Korean farmers work in a field along a highway outside the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, North Korea. North Korea allowed foreign journalists into the country this year, giving the west a glimpse of what has been a very secret society. (David Guttenfelder/Associated Press) #
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Amanda Knox bursts into tears after hearing the verdict that overturned her conviction and acquitted her of murdering her British roommate Meredith Kercher, at the Perugia court, central Italy. The Italian appeals court threw out Amanda Knox’s murder conviction and ordered the young American freed after nearly four years in prison. (Pier Paolo Cito/Associated Press) #
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People search for scrap metal in contaminated water at the bottom of one of the biggest trash dumps in the city, known as “The Mine,” in Guatemala City. (Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press) #
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A man affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street protests tackles a police officer during a march towards Wall Street in New York, Oct. 14, 2011. (Andrew Burton/Associated Press) #
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Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry fills out papers to officially enter New Hampshire’s First-in-the-Nation presidential primary ballot at the State House in Concord, N.H., Oct. 28, 2011. (Jim Cole/Associated Press) #
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A businessman sticks his tongue out in jest as he walks past tents erected by protesters from the Occupy London Stock Exchange group, as they continue their demonstration outside St Paul’s Cathedral, near the London Stock Exchange, Oct. 17, 2011. (Matt Dunham/Associated Press) #
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Navy Capt. Mark Kelly hugs his wife Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., after he received the Legion of Merit from Vice President Joe Biden during Kelly’s retirement ceremony in the Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex, Washington, D.C., Oct. 6, 2011. (David Lienemann/The White House/Associated Press) #
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An activist holds a cross in front of a burning barricade during evictions at the Dale Farm travellers site, near Basildon England, 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of London. Police in riot gear used sledgehammers to clear the way for the eviction of a community of Irish Travellers from a site where they have lived illegally for a decade. (Matt Dunham/Associated Press) #
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An LOT Polish airlines Boeing 767 flying from New York with 227 people on board makes an emergency landing at Warsaw’s airport, Nov. 1, 2011 after having problems lowering its landing gear. The plane had dropped fuel and circled above Warsaw for some time and a landing strip was specially prepared at the airport for the crash landing. No one was injured during the emergency landing according to an LOT spokesman. (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Supporters of Michael Jackson react outside the courthouse to the verdict in the trial of Doctor Conrad Murray in Los Angeles, Nov. 7, 2011 in southern California. He was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the King of Pop’s 2009 death, the court clerk said. There was a brief cry in the courtroom, and cheers outside, but Murray himself gave no reaction when the long-awaited verdict was announced after a six-week trial in Los Angeles. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images) #
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Students greet Penn State coach Joe Paterno as he arrives at his home in State College, Pa., Nov. 8, 2011. Paterno, along with former president Grahm Spanier, lost their jobs five days after Jerry Sandusky was charged in the sexual abuse of eight young men. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press) #
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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter pauses during an interview as he and his wife Rosalynn visit a Habitat for Humanity project in Leogane, Haiti. The Carters joined volunteers from around the world to build 100 homes in partnership with earthquake-affected families in Haiti during a week-long Habitat for Humanity housing project, Nov. 7, 2011. (Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press) #
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Election workers count ballots for the parliamentary elections in Luxor, Egypt, Nov. 29, 2011. (Associated Press) #
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North Carolina forward John Henson (31) tries to block a shot by Michigan State center Adreian Payne (5) during the first half of the Carrier Classic NCAA college basketball game aboard the USS Carl Vinson in Coronado, CA, Nov. 11, 2011. (Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press) #
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The shadow of US President Barack Obama is cast on a wall as he arrives to talk about the American Jobs Act in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Nov. 7, 2011. (Carolyn Kaste/Associated Press) #
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An Egyptian riot police officer fires tear gas during clashes with protesters near Tahrir square in Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 20, 2011. (Khalil Hamra/Associated Press) #
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Italian premier Mario Monti receives a small bell from former premier Silvio Berlusconi at Chigi palace premier’s office after the swearing in ceremony, in Rome. The bell is used by the Prime Minister to call attention during cabinet meetings, Nov. 16, 2011. Berlusconi resigned after numerous scandals were exposed, weaking his ruling power. (Pier Paolo Cito/Associated Press) #
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves his hearing at the High Court in London. Assange lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden to answer sex crime allegations. (Matt Dunham/Associated Press) #
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A man lifts an elderly woman after she deboarded a passenger bus on a flooded street in Bangkok, Thailand. Thailand’s worst floods in more than half a century continued to creep into Bangkok, Nov. 3, 2011. (Altaf Qadri/Associated Press) #
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Former Penn State football defensive coordinator Gerald “Jerry” Sandusky is placed in a police car in Bellefonte, Pa., to be taken to the office of Centre County Magisterial District Judge Leslie A. Dutchcot, Nov 5, 2011. Sandusky is charged with sexually abusing eight young men. (Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General via Commonwealth Media Services) #
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University of California, Davis Police Lt. John Pike uses pepper spray to move Occupy UC Davis protesters while blocking their exit from the school’s quad in Davis, Calif. Pike, the riot-clad police officer who pepper sprayed a row of peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters at a California university, is a retired U.S. Marine sergeant twice honored for his police work on campus, Nov. 18, 2011. (Wayne Tilcock/The Enterprise) #
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China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has told local governments not to relax its home purchase restrictions even though some of the controls are expiring at the end of the year, the China Business Journal reported on Saturday. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) #
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Myanmar’s pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton react after speaking to the press at Suu Kyi’s residence in Yangon, Myanmar. (Saul Loeb/Associated Press) #
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U.S. Army soldiers from 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas, begin their journey home after a deployment in Iraq, at Camp Virginia, Kuwait, Dec. 15, 2011. After nearly nine years, 4,500 American dead and 100,000 Iraqi dead, U.S. officials formally shut down the war in Iraq – a conflict that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said was worth the American sacrifice because it set Iraq on a path to democracy. (Maya Alleruzzo/Associated Press) #
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