2009 in photos (part 3 of 3)
Theyear 2009 is now coming to a close, and it's time to take a look backover the past 12 months through photographs. Historic elections wereheld in Iran, India and the United States, some wars wound down whileothers escalated, China turned 60, and the Berlin Wall was remembered20 years after it came down. Each photo tells its own tale, weavingtogether into the larger story of 2009. This is a multi-entry story,120 photographs over three days. Please see also part 1 and part 2. (40 photos total)
Thenew PS20 solar tower at the Solucar Platform in Sanlucar la Mayor,southern Spain, seen on Sept. 23, 2009. PS20, one of the most powerfulcommercial solar tower in the world, consists of a solar field made upof 1,255 mirrored heliostats aimed at the tower, producing steam whichis converted into electricity generation by a turbine. (AP Photo/MiguelAngel Morenatti) #
Supportersof ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya clash with soldiers nearthe presidential residency Tegucigalpa, Monday, June 29. 2009. Policefired tear gas to hold back thousands of Hondurans outside the occupiedpresidential residency as world leaders from Barack Obama to HugoChavez appealed to Honduras to reinstate Zelaya as president. (APPhoto/Esteban Felix) #
TedKennedy Jr. kisses the casket of his father in Our Lady of PerpetualHelp Basilica during a funeral mass in the Mission Hill neighborhood ofBoston on August 29, 2009. President Barack Obama, three formerpresidents and a nation's elite gathered in the rain to attend a grandCatholic funeral for Ted Kennedy, America's legendary politicalpatriarch. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images) #
Ayoung girl and her dog looks out from a vehicle as she and her familywait for security clearance at a checkpoint on the outskirt of Bannu, atown on edge of the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, Thursday,Oct. 22, 2009 as they flee a military offensive in South Waziristan.Pakistani troops and the Taliban fought fierce battles in Waziristan, amilitant sanctuary near the Afghan border, with both sides claimingearly victories in an army campaign that could shape the future of thecountry's battle against extremism. (AP Photo/Ijaz Muhammad) #
Aneruption of Mt. Redoubt seen at sunset from the cockpit of a DC-6flying over Cook Inlet near Anchorage, Alaska on March 31, 2009.Photograph kindly provided by Bryan Mulder - pilot and photographer. (©Bryan Mulder) #
DelhiMetro Rail Corporation (DMRC) employees work on the last-pre castsegments (rings) of the Phase-II underground tunneling project betweenneighborhoods Jangpura and Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi on October 12,2009, part of a larger project to have metro lines to cover the entireNational Capital Region for the 2010 Commonwealth Games (MANANVATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images) #
Alocal couple canoes through Atlanta's famous Krog Tunnel on September21st, 2009, after flooding followed heavy rains throughout the region.(© Caroline Smith) #
AUS Marine of 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade runs to safety momentsafter an IED blast in Garmsir district of Helmand Province inAfghanistan on July 13, 2009. Two US Marine soldiers were killed whenthe explosion occurred as they tried to clear a route into the Talibanheartland of southern Helmand province. (MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/GettyImages) #
AUS Marine from Fox Company 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines rests as hisplatoon finishes searching houses for the day during day two ofOperation Germinate into the restive Bhuji Bhast Pass in FarahProvince, southern Afghanistan, on October 8, 2009. The Bhuji BhastPass is effectively a Taliban corridor, mined with IEDs from one end tothe other, and lined with villages that are hostile to the Westerntroop presence. (DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images) #
VirginGalactic's SpaceShipTwo is unveiled in Mojave, California December 7,2009. Billionaire Richard Branson on Monday unveiled the firstcommercial passenger spaceship, a sleek black-and-white vessel thatrepresents an expensive gamble on creating a commercial space tourismindustry. (REUTERS/Phil McCarten) #
WadeeDaoud, a five-year-old visually impaired Palestinian boy, reacts tolight after a teacher opened the window blinds in his classroom at theHelen Keller Center for blind and visually impaired children in theEast Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina September 10, 2009. TheCenter was founded as a home for blind girls by English missionary,Mary Lovell, in the 1890s. (REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis) #
Alocal woman on a crutch shouts at Chinese soldiers wearing riot gear asa crowd of angry locals confront security forces on a street in thecity of Urumqi in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region July 7, 2009.Hundreds of Uighur protesters clashed with riot police in the capitalof China's Muslim region of Xinjiang on Tuesday, two days after ethnicunrest left 156 dead and more than 800 injured. (REUTERS/David Gray) #
OwenRabago (left) wipes a tear from the face of his father, SpecialistSheldon Rabago, as his mother Nancy wraps her arms around both of themduring a candlelight vigil at Hood Stadium on the Fort Hood Army Postin Fort Hood, Texas November 6, 2009. The day before, An Armypsychiatrist opened fire at the post, killing 13 people and wounding 30others. (REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi) #
Ascene from the annual Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake was heldnear Gloucester, England. After this notoriously dangerous race for thecheese, the man upside down was taken away to the hospital. (© Will De Freitas) #
Asection of the Rocky Mountain News newsroom sits empty on February 27,2009 in Denver, Colorado. The edition on Friday the 27th was the lastone for the nearly 150-year-old daily, Colorado's oldest newspaper. Theowner E.W. Scripps Co. announced the day before that the paper wasclosing down after efforts to sell the money-losing newspaper failed.(John Moore/Getty Images) #
Policeofficials detain a suspected militant from the site of a shooting at apolice training center in Lahore March 30, 2009. Pakistani securityforces took control of the police academy in Lahore on Monday aftermilitants rampaged through the complex, killing at least eight cadetsand wounding scores before holing up inside for hours. (REUTERS/MohsinRaza) #
Aninjured girl cries during an evacuation after an earthquake hit Padang,Indonesia's Sumatra island September 30, 2009. A 7.6 magnitudeearthquake struck off the city of Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra islandon September 30, 2009, killing at over 1,000 people and trappingthousands under rubble. (REUTERS/Muhammad Fitrah/Singgalang Newspaper) #
Burntout trees outside Kinglake that were destroyed by fire are viewed fromthis aerial shot on February 8, 2009. Over 170 people were killed andentire towns razed in one of the worst wildfire disasters in Australianhistory, sending thousands fleeing in scenes Prime Minister Kevin Ruddcompared to "hell". (MARK SMITH/AFP/Getty Images) #
MaldivianMinister of Fisheries and Agriculture Ibrahim Didi signs a declarationcalling on countries to cut down carbon dioxide emissions ahead of amajor U.N. climate change conference in December, in the Maldives,October 17, 2009. The Maldivian president and ministers held theworld's first underwater cabinet meeting, in a symbolic cry for helpover rising sea levels that threaten the tropical archipelago'sexistence. (REUTERS/Maldives Government) #
TheNASA space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope are seen insilhouette, side by side during solar transit on May 13, 2009, fromwest of Vero Beach, Florida in this image released by NASA May 14. Thetwo spaceships were at an altitude of 600 km (375 miles) and theyzipped across the sun in only 0.8 seconds during a risky but successfulmission to rescue the Hubble telescope. (REUTERS/ThierryLegault/NASA/Handout) #
Scientistsat CERN's control center celebrate after the successful restartoperation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on November 20, 2009 nearGeneva, Switzerland. The world's biggest atom-smasher had shut downafter its inauguration in September 2008 amid technical faults, andrestarted on November 20, 2009. CERN spokesman James Gillies said theinjections lasted a fraction of a second, enough for "a half or even acomplete circuit" of the Large Hadron Collider built in a 27-kilometer(17-mile) long tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.(STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images) #
Seven-timeTour de France winner and Kazakh cycling team Astana (AST)'s LanceArmstrong of the United States rides in the pack under heavy rains onJuly 17, 2009 in the 200 km and thirteenth stage of the 2009 Tour deFrance cycling race run between Vittel and Colmar. Armstrong went ontofinish the tour in third place, behind winner Alberto Contador. (JOELSAGET/AFP/Getty Images) #
Acar plows into a parade that included Queen Beatrix and the royalfamily on the national Queen's Day holiday in the Dutch city ofApeldoorn April 30, 2009. Ten people were injured and eight killed inthe attack, including the 38-year-old driver, who narrowly missed theopen-top bus carrying Queen Beatrix and the royal family.(REUTERS/Robin Utrecht/Pool) #
Militantsfrom Hizbul Islam haul the bloodied body of Mohamed Ibrahim, 48, from achest-deep pit after stoning him to death for illicit sexualintercourse with a woman in the Afgoye district, Somalia on December13, 2009. Ibrahim was sentenced to death by a local Islamic court afterhe was found guilty of infidelity. (REUTERS/Stringer) #
More links and information
2009 in photos (part 1 of 3) - Part one of The Big Picture Yearender (2009)
2009 in photos (part 2 of 3) - Part two of The Big Picture Yearender (2009)
