[Freedom fighters in the city square begin the protest that changed the world forever.]

[U.S. President Barack Obama, who scored the winning goal in the World Cup final against Germany, holds his trophy aloft.]

[Three-year-old Kayden Johnson smiles at the camera, safely buckled into his car seat and hanging upside-down after his mother's minivan rolled off an embankment.]

[A dog sits in a wheelchair in front of a burning building, one of many consumed by ongoing wildfires in the southwest.]

[Macaulay Culkin accepts his Best Actor Academy Award despite a "wardrobe malfunction" that left his genitalia hanging out of his tuxedo.]

[Jim Campbell and Tyrone Reilly, dressed in matching waders, are married by the Reverend Marisol Jacobs knee-deep in rising floodwaters.]

[An anonymous Chilean man shocks his wife by sitting up in his casket, winning lottery ticket in hand.]

[After rescuing a child from a collapsed nightclub, Pope Francis blesses a surviving bouncer.]

[The first pictures to emerge after Nelson Mandela's death show Mandela lying next to the body of Osama bin Laden, whom he apparently strangled in hand-to-hand combat.]

[A massive hole appeared in the moon in March, predicating natural disasters worldwide in the months to come. NASA has since had the hole repaired.]

[A young girl holds a gun in front of Los Angeles' famous "HOLLYWOOD" sign, of which only the "W" remains.]

[The bitcoin found in a sewer grate by a seven-year-old homeless Chicagoan, who was briefly launched out of, and then plunged back into, poverty.]

[Lindsay Lohan walks away from the wreckage of a tornado after being trapped for three days.]

[Hopeful consumers line up outside of an Apple store in Minneapolis in hopes of snagging a new limited-edition Hobbit Phone.]

[After an asteroid struck the 2014 Oscars ceremony, a lone beacon of hope remained: Quvenzhané Wallis, emerging from the rubble of the Dolby Theatre.]

[After losing his final bitcoin, former Gawker writer Adrian Chen sits under a Chicago overpass, begging for change.]

[New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, bullhorn in hand, ushers a group of private-school students into hurricane fencing.]

[The lifeless body of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lies on the tracks in the last flooded subway tunnel to be drained after Superstorm Sandy.]

[Fifteen pink slips pile high in the Gawker offices, each bearing a different staffer's name.]

[A Sudanese child attempts to load Kinja, the hit international blogging service, on his laptop, provided by the One Laptop per Child program.]

[Gawker founder Nick Denton relaxes in his apartment, hovering 6 inches above the floor as a blue light glows inside a giant styrofoam orb suspended from his living-room ceiling.]

[First Dog Bo Obama returns to shore during a violent storm that rocked the Atlantic Ocean, clenching a copy of the UN report on climate change between his teeth.]

Captions collected and edited by Sarah Hedgecock. Previously: The Most Powerful Photos of 2013.