The 40 Most Powerful Photos of The Decade

1.

Lee Nelson (unseen) throws money at FIFA President Sepp Blatter at a news conference after the Extraordinary FIFA Executive Committee Meeting at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland on July 20, 2015. The incident took place at the first meeting of the world governing body's executive committee since its corruption crisis exploded. The meeting in Zurich had been called to allocate the date for a special Congress to elect a new president after Blatter's announcement that he would step down. That decision followed mounting pressure on FIFA following a series of arrests, including seven FIFA officials in Zurich, following an FBI investigation and separate probes by Swiss authorities into the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

2.

Usain Bolt of Jamaica looks back at his competition as he crosses the finish line in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

3.

Notre Dame Cathedral engulfed in flames as it burns on April 15, 2019. The structure is currently being rebuilt and much of the world came together to show appreciation and to raise money for it's reconstruction.

4.

Film producer and Hollywood sleez-bag Harvey Weinstein arrives at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, U.S., May 25, 2018. The 67-year-old mogul was charged with two counts of rape, a count of criminal sex act and two counts of predatory sexual assault for allegedly raping a woman in 2013 and sexually assaulting another in 2006.

5.

The first iceberg of the season passes through Iceberg Alley near Ferryland, Newfoundland, Canada, April 16, 2017. The iceberg stands at 150ft tall this and is the biggest one Ferryland mayor Aidan Kavanagh has ever seen.

6.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is driven away by Metropolitan Police officers on April 11, 2019, after his arrest and remove from inside London's Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange had been living in the embassy for six years as he avoided extradition to Sweden.

7.

The Northern Lights seen above the ash plume of a volcano in Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland, on April 22, 2010. The eruptions caused travel chaos across Europe that lasted longer than six days.

8.

A woman in the iron market of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 29, 2010. A massive magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the Caribbean island two weeks earlier killing 300,000 people and displaced 1.5 million.

9.

Britain's Prince William and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, kiss on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, alongside bridesmaids Grace van Cutsem (left), Margarita Armstrong-Jones and pageboy Tom Pettifer, after their wedding in Westminster Abbey in London on April 29, 2011. When the couple kissed on the balcony of Buckingham Palace before the crowd, the world gasped in delight. But William's three-year-old goddaughter Grace stole the show in this picture, famously covering her ears during the first public kiss as the crowd cheered.

10.

Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to the Lambeth Palace in London, Britain, September 17, 2010. The Pope made history by becoming the first pontiff to step foot inside Lambeth Palace.

11.

Protesters take over Tahrir Square after the announcement of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's resignation in Cairo, Egypt, on February 11 2011. These protest would spark what was is known as the Arab Spring.

12.

A 5.3lb chicken is pictured next to 14,600,000 bolivars, its price and the equivalent of US$2.22, at a mini-market in Caracas, Venezuela, on August 16, 2018. Venezuela had been thrown into chaos by a socialist government under Nicolas Maduro which has introduced a controversial tranche of fiscal policies. Unbridled hyperinflation saw the bolivar devalued to a point where workers needed wheelbarrows to carry enough cash for a weekly shop.

13.

A lone tree, seen on July 20, 2018, still stands after some of the harshest few years of Australian history. Jimmie and May McKeown's property is located on the outskirts of town in Walgett, rural New South Wales. All possible tracks lead to the single water trough, almost creating an abstract star around the lone provider of life.

14.

A demonstrator glares furiously at a riot policeman after two of her friends were arrested during a protest in Santiago marking Chile's 1973 military coup. Other pictures of the woman, also taken on September 11, 2016, show her making obscene gestures to police. The photographer said he regretted not asking her name, but said: 'The situation was tense.'

15.

Doaa Elghobashy of Egypt and Kira Walkenhorst of Germany compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics Beach Volleyball Women's Preliminary in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 8, 2016. The outfit of Elghobashy, who was covered from her head to her ankles, was in stark contrast to her German rival Walkenhorst who stuck to the sport's traditional two-piece outfit for the clash. Although the International Volleyball Federation used to have standards regulating the size of uniforms, those were loosened heading into the London 2012 Olympics to allow full sleeves and leggings.

16.

Air Force One carrying U.S. President Barack Obama and his family flies over a neighborhood of Havana as it approaches the runway to land at Havana's international airport, Cuba, March 20, 2016. Obama was the first sitting president in nearly 90 years to visit the island, in a trip that the White House said would 'deepen' America's relationship with the authoritarian government following more than half a century of tension.

17.

A migrant carrying a child falls after being tripped by TV camerawoman Petra Laszlo while trying to escape from a collection point in Roszke village, Hungary on September 8, 2015. Laszlo was filmed tripping up children and a Syrian father carrying a crying child as they attempted to flee across a field on the Hungarian-Serbian border. She later apologized for her actions - and denied accusations of racism, claiming she thought she was being attacked at the time.

18.

Everyone loves a cat picture so what about a Cat Island? The felines here, seen on February 25 2015, crowd the harbour of Aoshima in southern Japan, which earned the nickname due to being home to up to 150 strays, considerably more than there are humans there.

19.

U.S. President Barack Obama (2nd L) and Vice President Joe Biden (L), along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, Washington, U.S., May 1, 2011. Obama watched on a TV screen with government officials as a commando gunned down bin Laden. Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a U.S. Navy Seal, the leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye. The footage of the battle in Bin Laden's Pakistani hideout was said to show one of his wives acting as a human shield to protect him as he blasted away with an AK47 assault rifle. She died, along with three other men, including one of Bin Laden's sons. Within hours, the Al Qaeda leader's body was buried at sea.

20.

A man holds a giant pencil as he takes part alongside hundreds of thousands of other French citizens in a solidarity march on the streets of Paris, France, on January 11, 2015. Four days earlier gunmen burst into the offices of satirical cartoon Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing 12 and injuring 11. A huge outpouring of sympathy led to the slogan 'Je suis Charlie' taking hold as ordinary people rallied against the Islamist murderers.

21.

Gordon Satterly, 61, from Michigan (L) kisses his husband Richard Brand, 53, from Texas, at the International Gay Rodeo Association's Rodeo In the Rock party in Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 24, 2015. 'I wish we didn't have to have a gay rodeo,' said competitor Wade Earp. 'I wish we could just rodeo.'

22.

ISIS fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of northern Raqqa province, Syria, June 30, 2014. ISIS took over the city, making it the capital of their so-called caliphate, until they were forced out by a US-led coalition in 2017. For three years, Raqqa saw some of ISIS's worst abuses and grew into one of its main governance hubs, a centre for both its potent propaganda machine and its unprecedented experiment in jihadist statehood.

23.

Residents react as Government forces enter the Mare slums in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as part of a 'pacification' program to clear the area of criminals and drug dealers. The raid, on March 26 2014, came ahead of the city hosting football's World Cup and to years before the Olympics arrived there. Mare is home to around 130,000 people and the pacification program had been running for six years at that point.

24.

Indians who are considered un-contacted by anthropologists, react to a plane flying over their community in the Amazon basin near the Xinane river in Brazil's Acre State, Brazil, March 25, 2014. Leaders of the Ashaninka tribe, which shared territory with the tribe and other un-contacted ones, had asked the government and NGOs for help in controlling what they considered the encroachment of these tribes on their own area, stating that the movement of other tribes is caused by pressure from illegal logging across the border in Peru.

25.

Syrian rebels dodge debris after the wall which they were taking cover behind is hit by a shell fired from a government controlled checkpoint during fighting in the Ain Tarma neighborhood of Damascus in Syria on January 30, 2013.

26.

An aerial view of the Costa Concordia cruise liner, which capsized off Giglio Island in Italy, seen on August 26 2013. A total of 32 people were killed when the 144,500-tonne ship hit rocks and listed, trapping people inside, making it Italy's worst maritime disaster since the Second World War. Francesco Schettino, dubbed 'Captain Coward' after he fled the ship before its 4,200 passengers were safely ashore, was sentenced to 16 years in jail for manslaughter. The 54-year-old was given ten years for manslaughter, five for causing a shipwreck, one for abandoning ship, and a further month for giving false information to port authorities.

27.

A man runs up the 'gostra', a pole covered in grease, during the religious feast of St Julian, patron saint of the town of St Julian's, outside Valletta, Malta, on August 25, 2013. The idea is to grab the flag at the end of the pole, but many try and only a few succeed. On the day of the feast, there is a procession around town carrying a statue of St. Julian followed by brass band music, before the gostra contest rounds off festivities.

28.

An aerial view shows a house blown into marshland by Hurricane Sandy, which hit the northeastern USA in 2012. This image was taken on November 28 2012, almost a month after the storm , in the devastated Oakwood neighborhood of New York's Staten Island.

29.

The full moon rises through the Olympic Rings hanging beneath Tower Bridge during the London 2012 Olympic Games in Britain, August 3, 2012. The eyes of the world were firmly fixed on London, from the hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe who arrived to share the Olympic experience, to the billion plus people who tuned in to watch events unfold on TV. And they saw a united London, a city that rose to the occasion and has basked in the spotlight.

30.

The full moon rises through the Olympic Rings hanging beneath Tower Bridge during the London 2012 Olympic Games in Britain, August 3, 2012. The eyes of the world were firmly fixed on London, from the hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe who arrived to share the Olympic experience, to the billion plus people who tuned in to watch events unfold on TV. And they saw a united London, a city that rose to the occasion and has basked in the spotlight.

31.

The race car of driver Will Power (left) goes airborne during the IZOD IndyCar World Championship race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 16, 2011. Dan Wheldon (whose car is not pictured) died from fatal injuries. The father-of-two was catapulted helplessly into the air at 225mph before landing on a barrier.

32.

A plane flies through the 'Tribute in Light' marking the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in lower Manhattan, New York. The Tribute in Light is an art installation of 88 searchlights placed six blocks south of the World Trade Center on top of a car park in New York City to create two vertical columns of light to represent the Twin Towers. Almost 3,000 people died in the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

33.

Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea on June 30, 2019. 'You're the first U.S. president to cross this line,' Kim told him, moments after Trump became the first American president to venture into North Korean territory.

34.

Covered corpses are seen on the shore of the small, wooded island of Utoeya, after mass killer Anders Behring Breivik killed 69 people in a ferocious attack on a youth summer camp of Norway's ruling Labour party, after hours earlier detonating a bomb that killed seven in Oslo, Norway. Photo taken on July 23, 2011, a day after the attacks. Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in jail, the longest sentence Norwegian courts could impose.

35.

U.S. Army soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, B battery 2-8 field artillery, fire a howitzer artillery piece at Seprwan Ghar forward fire base in Panjwai district, Kandahar province southern Afghanistan, June 12, 2011. Trump has made little secret of his desire to bring the 14,000 U.S. troops home from Afghanistan, where American troops have been deployed since a U.S.-led campaign overthrew the Taliban in 2001. But there are concerns among Afghan officials and U.S. national security aides about a U.S. withdrawal, with fears Afghanistan could be plunged into a new civil war that could herald a return of Taliban rule and allow international militants, including Islamic State, to find a refuge.

36.

Residents sift through the ruins of their houses after a fire in Makati city, Manila, Philippines. The blaze, on April 19 2011, was started by faulty wiring and quickly spread, engulfing dozens of homes. Despite the widespread devastation caused by the inferno, only nine people were injured.

37.

Britain's Prince Harry gestures next to his wife Meghan as they ride a horse-drawn carriage after their wedding ceremony at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle in Windsor, Britain, May 19, 2018.

38.

Donald Trump welcomes 11-year-old Frank Giaccio as he cuts the Rose Garden grass at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 15, 2017. When Trump walked out to meet the Virginia boy, Giaccio didn't stop. He kept his safety goggles on and earplugs in, and kept pushing the Honda mower. 'Wow! Great job, Frank! Great job!' Trump said.

39.

A wave approaches Miyako City from the Heigawa estuary in Iwate Prefecture after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck the area in Miyako, Japan, March 11, 2011. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the country and the fourth most powerful to ever be recorded globally. It killed nearly 16,000 people and caused food and water shortages to hundreds of thousands in the aftermath. The tsunami precipitated the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the most severe nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

40.

A Young man is held at gunpoint by rebels, and is accused of being a loyalist to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. This 2011 photo shows the intense atmosphere that swept through Lybia as they had a civil war.