Directions: Clicking each blank in this quiz will take you to the original Times source for that entry so you can check your answer.
1. In January the mystery of who closed two lanes onto the _________ exploded into a political scandal for Gov. Chris Christie when emails and texts revealed that a top aide had ordered the closings. The closings turned a local borough into a parking lot for four days in September 2013.
2. On Jan. 11, Yankees third baseman _________ was barred for 162 games and the 2014 postseason, the longest suspension for doping in baseball history.
3. On Feb. 2, the New York-New Jersey region concluded its big moment hosting the first outdoor _________ in a Northern climate with a dominating 43-8 victory by the Seattle Seahawks over the Denver Broncos.
4. On Feb. 7, the Winter Olympics officially began with a nearly three-hour opening ceremony, which The Times called a “majestic spectacle.” These games, held in _________, Russia, are believed to be the most expensive Olympic Games in history.
5. Three months of civic unrest in _________ spiraled out of control in February with dozens of people dead, the center of the elegant city of Kiev turned into a burning war zone and the eventual flight from the capital by the president, Viktor F. Yanukovych.
6. In a triumph long deferred, _________ won the best picture Oscar at the 86th Academy Awards on March 2, the first time Hollywood conferred its top honor to the work of a black director.
7. _________ announced on March 8 that it had lost contact with one of its airplanes, which was carrying 239 people to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. After an exhaustive search over thousands of miles, the plane has still not been found.
8. President Vladimir V. Putin reclaimed _________ as a part of Russia on March 18, reversing what he described as a historic injustice inflicted by the Soviet Union 60 years ago. The United States, working in coordination with Europe, imposed a new round of sanctions on 11 prominent political figures as a result.
9. In early March, the Justice Department began a criminal investigation into _________’s decade-long failure to address deadly safety problems before the company announced a huge vehicle recall in February. At least 35 deaths have been linked to a faulty ignition switch.
10. On March 22 a devastating landslide tore apart a small town in _________, killing 43 people and bringing down something like three times the volume of mud as there is concrete in Hoover Dam in one momentous cascade, creating a one-square-mile path of destruction.
11. A ferry that was carrying hundreds of high school students to a resort island sank off the southwestern tip of _________ on April 16, killing more than 300 people. The captain was sentenced in November to 36 years in prison for deserting his ship and its passengers in a fatal crisis.
12. Roughly 275 girls were abducted by armed militants in Nigeria on April 15. Months later, scores of young women were still being kidnapped in new abductions by Islamist militants in Nigeria, indicating that _________’s campaign of violence is continuing despite official reports of a cease-fire with the group.
13. On April 29, the N.B.A. handed down a lifetime ban to the longtime Los Angeles Clippers owner _________. It was an extraordinary step in professional sports and one intended to rid the league of the owner after he was recorded making racist comments.
14. Pharrell Williams’s song, _________, and its accompanying 24-hour music video, continued their viral popularity in 2014. By spring a group of young Iranian men and women were arrested after posting their own version and were forced to publicly apologize before they were released on bail.
15. On May 1, the Obama administration released the names of 55 colleges and universities under investigation for their handling of _________ complaints. This was an unusual step meant to increase pressure on the institutions to crack down on a problem that institutions and victims alike have long hidden from view.
16. The defeat of the Indian National Congress, which controlled India’s government for nearly all of its postcolonial history, reflected a rapid change in Indian society as urbanization and economic growth broke down old voting patterns.
17. In May, the level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, _________, passed a long-feared milestone, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.
18. A gunman obsessed by grievances toward _________ killed six people and wounded 13 others near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, on May 23. The violence touched off an anguished conversation at the university and on social media, with hundreds of thousands of people using the hashtag #yesallwomen to discuss related issues.
19. Sgt. _________, the lone American prisoner of war from the Afghan conflict, was released on May 31 in exchange for five Taliban detainees. After nearly five years in captivity, he returned to the United States on June 13 to a homecoming void of any of his relatives and dampened by a swirling controversy over his capture and release.
20. A cycle of violence between Israel and Palestinians started in the wake of the kidnapping and killing of three _________ in the West Bank in June, and the grisly revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem in early July. After 50 days of fighting that took some 2,200 lives, leveled large areas of the Gaza Strip and paralyzed Israel’s south for the summer, Israeli and Palestinian leaders reached an open-ended cease-fire agreement in late August that promised only limited change to conditions in Gaza and left unresolved the broader issues underpinning the conflict.
21. Four years after he bolted to Miami, LeBron James announced on July 11 that he would rejoin the _________, for whom he played in the first seven seasons of his storied professional career.
22. _________ won the World Cup on July 13 with a 1-0 extra time victory over Argentina in Rio de Janeiro.
23. In July, an unprecedented number of _________ fleeing violence in Central America began to cross the Texas border, and processing centers struggled to handle the onslaught. In September, President Obama approved a plan to allow several thousand of them to apply for refugee status in the United States.
24. On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard exploded and crashed into a flowered wheat field in a part of eastern Ukraine controlled by _________. Accusations and counteraccusations continue over who shot down the plane.
25. After Sunni extremists under the banner of _________ overran large parts of Iraq, President Obama announced in August that he had authorized limited airstrikes against these militants. His statement marked the return of the United States to a significant battlefield role in Iraq for the first time since the last American soldier left the country at the end of 2011.
26. The fatal shooting of _________, an unarmed black teenager, on Aug. 9 by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. was met with outrage in the largely African-American community. A vigil for the victim was followed by angry overnight demonstrations after protesters took to the streets, looting stores, vandalizing cars and confronting the police. By Aug. 18 Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri announced he would deploy the Missouri National Guard after declaring a state of emergency.
27. Facing the worst known outbreak of the _________ virus, the World Health Organization declared an international public health emergency on Aug. 8, only the third declaration of its kind since regulations permitting such alarms were adopted in 2007.
28. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria posted a video on Aug. 19 that it said showed the beheading of James Foley, an American journalist who was kidnapped in Syria nearly two years ago. He was one of at least 23 foreign hostages from 12 countries who were kidnapped by Syrian insurgents, sold or handed over to the Islamic State. A majority of the hostages were freed in exchange for large sums of cash, but those from the United States and Britain — two countries that abide by a strict _________ policy — were either killed or are still being held.
29. With everyone from former President George W. Bush to Justin Bieber and Shakira posting online videos of themselves dumping ice water on their heads in the name of charity, the summer fundraising drive raised more than $100 million for _________, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
30. On Sept. 10, President Obama authorized a major expansion of the military campaign against rampaging Sunni militants in the Middle East. On Sept. 18, the Senate gave overwhelming approval to the training and arming of _________ rebels in the fight with ISIS. Early on Sept. 23, the United States and five Arab allies launched a wide-ranging air campaign against the Islamic State and at least one other extremist group in Syria for the first time.
31. On Sept. 18, voters in _________ rejected independence from Britain in a referendum that had threatened to break up the 307-year union between them.
32. On Sept. 20, a Texas man managed to get in the front door of the White House after jumping over the fence. On Oct. 1, Julia Pierson resigned under pressure as director of the _________ after failing to quell a bipartisan political furor over repeated breaches of White House security and losing the confidence of the president her agency is charged with protecting.
33. On Sept. 25, _________ stroked his 3,463rd hit and ended his 20-season Yankee Stadium career. The 6-5 win over the Baltimore Orioles was his 1,627th regular-season victory as a Yankee.
34. Thousands of Hong Kong university students abandoned classes in September to rally against the Chinese government’s limits on voting rights. By Sept. 28, downtown Hong Kong turned into a battlefield of tear gas and seething crowds after the police moved against the protest, inciting public fury that brought tens of thousands of people into the streets. As the protests in what came to be called the _________ Revolution dwindled in Hong Kong, organizers said they had moved the needle, however slightly, toward the possibility of a more democratic future for the city’s 7.2 million people.
35. In September, a national debate raged over domestic violence and the future of the N.F.L. after video footage was released showing _________ of the Baltimore Ravens knocking out his then-fiancée in an elevator, and Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings was accused of beating his 4-year-old son.
36. A man from _________, Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to develop symptoms outside Africa during the current epidemic, was hospitalized in Dallas with the Ebola virus. He died on Oct. 8. Two nurses who were on the medical team that cared for him also became ill, but later recovered.
37. On Oct. 10, the Pakistani education activist, _________, 17, became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She shared the prize this year with the Indian child rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi.
38. The long-simmering debate over the name of an N.F.L. team, the _________, took a new turn in October when President Obama said that he would consider changing it if he were the team’s owner. Some, including many Native American groups, find the name objectionable.
39. On Oct. 22, a doctor in New York City who had recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea became the first person in the city to test positive for the virus. On Oct. 23, the governors of New York and New Jersey imposed a mandatory __________ on people arriving at two area airports who have had direct contact with those infected with Ebola. On Oct. 31, a judge in Maine rejected arguments by the state that the movements of Kaci Hickox, a nurse who had been held against her will after she returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, should be firmly restricted.
40. In the _________ on Nov. 4, resurgent Republicans took control of the Senate, expanded their hold on the House of Representatives, and defended some of the most closely contested governors’ races, in a repudiation of President Obama that will reorder the political map in his final years in office.
41. In November, _________ scored the fastest-selling album in 12 years with “1989,” then decided to remove her entire catalog from Spotify. The artist told Yahoo, “I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music.”
42. In a technological feat that gives scientists their first opportunity to dig into a remnant of the early solar system, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission successfully placed a small spacecraft on the surface of a speeding __________ on Nov. 12.
43. _________ triumphant return to the national stage as he celebrated his 77th birthday this year fell apart in the face of a wave of accusations by women who say he drugged and raped them decades ago.
44. A year after it opened, Disney estimated that _________, with its hit song “Let It Go,” has brought in more than $1 billion in retail revenue.
45. President Obama chose confrontation over conciliation on Nov. 20 as he asserted the powers of the Oval Office to reshape the nation’s _________ system. His directive will shield up to five million people.
46. On Nov. 24, a St. Louis County grand jury announced that it had brought no criminal charges against _________, a white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, more than three months ago in nearby Ferguson. Word of the decision set off a new wave of anger over what protesters called a pattern of police brutality against young black men.
47. A Staten Island grand jury on Dec. 3 ended the criminal case against a white New York police officer whose chokehold on __________, an unarmed black man, led to the man’s death. The decision drew condemnation from elected officials and touched off protests across the nation.
48. The Senate Intelligence Committee on Dec. 9 issued a sweeping indictment of the _________’s program to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, drawing on millions of internal C.I.A. documents to illuminate practices that it said were more brutal — and far less effective — than the agency acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public.
49. Heavily armed police officers ended a hostage siege in _________, Australia early Dec. 16, storming a downtown cafe where an armed man who was said to be a self-proclaimed sheikh had held employees and customers for more than 16 hours.
50. 2014 saw the deaths of many notable people, including Oscar-winning comedian _________, who died by suicide at 63, and writer _________, described by The Times as a “lyrical witness of the Jim Crow South.”
51. On Dec. 16, the _________ took their war on education to a ruthless new low with an assault on a crowded school in Peshawar that killed 145 people — 132 of them uniformed schoolchildren — in the deadliest single attack in the group’s history.
52. Sony Pictures Entertainment on Dec. 17 dropped plans for its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” a movie that depicts the assassination of the North Korean leader _________, after receiving a terror threat against theaters. The same day, American intelligence officials concluded that the North Korean government was centrally involved with devastating hacking attacks on Sony’s computers.
53. President Obama on Dec. 17 ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with _________ and the opening of an embassy there for the first time in more than a half-century as he vowed to “cut loose the shackles of the past” and sweep aside one of the last vestiges of the Cold War.
54. Two police officers sitting in their patrol car in New York City were shot at point-blank range and killed on Dec. 20 by a man who, officials said, had traveled to the city from Baltimore vowing to kill officers. Mayor _________, at the helm of a city still raw from weeks of protests after a grand jury’s decision, called for a suspension of the demonstrations, asked the public to report any possible threats against police officers and urged New Yorkers to thank and console officers in mourning.
55. Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501, an Airbus A320 airliner carrying 162 people, disappeared from radar screens early on Dec. 28, about 40 minutes after leaving the _________ city of Surabaya en route to Singapore. On Dec. 30, Indonesian rescue teams said that they had found bodies and what appeared to be debris from the flight in the Karimata Strait off the coast of Borneo.
1. In January the mystery of who closed two lanes onto the _________ exploded into a political scandal for Gov. Chris Christie when emails and texts revealed that a top aide had ordered the closings. The closings turned a local borough into a parking lot for four days in September 2013.
2. On Jan. 11, Yankees third baseman _________ was barred for 162 games and the 2014 postseason, the longest suspension for doping in baseball history.
3. On Feb. 2, the New York-New Jersey region concluded its big moment hosting the first outdoor _________ in a Northern climate with a dominating 43-8 victory by the Seattle Seahawks over the Denver Broncos.
4. On Feb. 7, the Winter Olympics officially began with a nearly three-hour opening ceremony, which The Times called a “majestic spectacle.” These games, held in _________, Russia, are believed to be the most expensive Olympic Games in history.
5. Three months of civic unrest in _________ spiraled out of control in February with dozens of people dead, the center of the elegant city of Kiev turned into a burning war zone and the eventual flight from the capital by the president, Viktor F. Yanukovych.
6. In a triumph long deferred, _________ won the best picture Oscar at the 86th Academy Awards on March 2, the first time Hollywood conferred its top honor to the work of a black director.
7. _________ announced on March 8 that it had lost contact with one of its airplanes, which was carrying 239 people to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. After an exhaustive search over thousands of miles, the plane has still not been found.
8. President Vladimir V. Putin reclaimed _________ as a part of Russia on March 18, reversing what he described as a historic injustice inflicted by the Soviet Union 60 years ago. The United States, working in coordination with Europe, imposed a new round of sanctions on 11 prominent political figures as a result.
9. In early March, the Justice Department began a criminal investigation into _________’s decade-long failure to address deadly safety problems before the company announced a huge vehicle recall in February. At least 35 deaths have been linked to a faulty ignition switch.
10. On March 22 a devastating landslide tore apart a small town in _________, killing 43 people and bringing down something like three times the volume of mud as there is concrete in Hoover Dam in one momentous cascade, creating a one-square-mile path of destruction.
11. A ferry that was carrying hundreds of high school students to a resort island sank off the southwestern tip of _________ on April 16, killing more than 300 people. The captain was sentenced in November to 36 years in prison for deserting his ship and its passengers in a fatal crisis.
12. Roughly 275 girls were abducted by armed militants in Nigeria on April 15. Months later, scores of young women were still being kidnapped in new abductions by Islamist militants in Nigeria, indicating that _________’s campaign of violence is continuing despite official reports of a cease-fire with the group.
13. On April 29, the N.B.A. handed down a lifetime ban to the longtime Los Angeles Clippers owner _________. It was an extraordinary step in professional sports and one intended to rid the league of the owner after he was recorded making racist comments.
14. Pharrell Williams’s song, _________, and its accompanying 24-hour music video, continued their viral popularity in 2014. By spring a group of young Iranian men and women were arrested after posting their own version and were forced to publicly apologize before they were released on bail.
15. On May 1, the Obama administration released the names of 55 colleges and universities under investigation for their handling of _________ complaints. This was an unusual step meant to increase pressure on the institutions to crack down on a problem that institutions and victims alike have long hidden from view.
16. The defeat of the Indian National Congress, which controlled India’s government for nearly all of its postcolonial history, reflected a rapid change in Indian society as urbanization and economic growth broke down old voting patterns.
17. In May, the level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, _________, passed a long-feared milestone, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.
18. A gunman obsessed by grievances toward _________ killed six people and wounded 13 others near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, on May 23. The violence touched off an anguished conversation at the university and on social media, with hundreds of thousands of people using the hashtag #yesallwomen to discuss related issues.
19. Sgt. _________, the lone American prisoner of war from the Afghan conflict, was released on May 31 in exchange for five Taliban detainees. After nearly five years in captivity, he returned to the United States on June 13 to a homecoming void of any of his relatives and dampened by a swirling controversy over his capture and release.
20. A cycle of violence between Israel and Palestinians started in the wake of the kidnapping and killing of three _________ in the West Bank in June, and the grisly revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem in early July. After 50 days of fighting that took some 2,200 lives, leveled large areas of the Gaza Strip and paralyzed Israel’s south for the summer, Israeli and Palestinian leaders reached an open-ended cease-fire agreement in late August that promised only limited change to conditions in Gaza and left unresolved the broader issues underpinning the conflict.
21. Four years after he bolted to Miami, LeBron James announced on July 11 that he would rejoin the _________, for whom he played in the first seven seasons of his storied professional career.
22. _________ won the World Cup on July 13 with a 1-0 extra time victory over Argentina in Rio de Janeiro.
23. In July, an unprecedented number of _________ fleeing violence in Central America began to cross the Texas border, and processing centers struggled to handle the onslaught. In September, President Obama approved a plan to allow several thousand of them to apply for refugee status in the United States.
24. On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard exploded and crashed into a flowered wheat field in a part of eastern Ukraine controlled by _________. Accusations and counteraccusations continue over who shot down the plane.
25. After Sunni extremists under the banner of _________ overran large parts of Iraq, President Obama announced in August that he had authorized limited airstrikes against these militants. His statement marked the return of the United States to a significant battlefield role in Iraq for the first time since the last American soldier left the country at the end of 2011.
26. The fatal shooting of _________, an unarmed black teenager, on Aug. 9 by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. was met with outrage in the largely African-American community. A vigil for the victim was followed by angry overnight demonstrations after protesters took to the streets, looting stores, vandalizing cars and confronting the police. By Aug. 18 Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri announced he would deploy the Missouri National Guard after declaring a state of emergency.
27. Facing the worst known outbreak of the _________ virus, the World Health Organization declared an international public health emergency on Aug. 8, only the third declaration of its kind since regulations permitting such alarms were adopted in 2007.
28. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria posted a video on Aug. 19 that it said showed the beheading of James Foley, an American journalist who was kidnapped in Syria nearly two years ago. He was one of at least 23 foreign hostages from 12 countries who were kidnapped by Syrian insurgents, sold or handed over to the Islamic State. A majority of the hostages were freed in exchange for large sums of cash, but those from the United States and Britain — two countries that abide by a strict _________ policy — were either killed or are still being held.
29. With everyone from former President George W. Bush to Justin Bieber and Shakira posting online videos of themselves dumping ice water on their heads in the name of charity, the summer fundraising drive raised more than $100 million for _________, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
30. On Sept. 10, President Obama authorized a major expansion of the military campaign against rampaging Sunni militants in the Middle East. On Sept. 18, the Senate gave overwhelming approval to the training and arming of _________ rebels in the fight with ISIS. Early on Sept. 23, the United States and five Arab allies launched a wide-ranging air campaign against the Islamic State and at least one other extremist group in Syria for the first time.
31. On Sept. 18, voters in _________ rejected independence from Britain in a referendum that had threatened to break up the 307-year union between them.
32. On Sept. 20, a Texas man managed to get in the front door of the White House after jumping over the fence. On Oct. 1, Julia Pierson resigned under pressure as director of the _________ after failing to quell a bipartisan political furor over repeated breaches of White House security and losing the confidence of the president her agency is charged with protecting.
33. On Sept. 25, _________ stroked his 3,463rd hit and ended his 20-season Yankee Stadium career. The 6-5 win over the Baltimore Orioles was his 1,627th regular-season victory as a Yankee.
34. Thousands of Hong Kong university students abandoned classes in September to rally against the Chinese government’s limits on voting rights. By Sept. 28, downtown Hong Kong turned into a battlefield of tear gas and seething crowds after the police moved against the protest, inciting public fury that brought tens of thousands of people into the streets. As the protests in what came to be called the _________ Revolution dwindled in Hong Kong, organizers said they had moved the needle, however slightly, toward the possibility of a more democratic future for the city’s 7.2 million people.
35. In September, a national debate raged over domestic violence and the future of the N.F.L. after video footage was released showing _________ of the Baltimore Ravens knocking out his then-fiancée in an elevator, and Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings was accused of beating his 4-year-old son.
36. A man from _________, Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to develop symptoms outside Africa during the current epidemic, was hospitalized in Dallas with the Ebola virus. He died on Oct. 8. Two nurses who were on the medical team that cared for him also became ill, but later recovered.
37. On Oct. 10, the Pakistani education activist, _________, 17, became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She shared the prize this year with the Indian child rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi.
38. The long-simmering debate over the name of an N.F.L. team, the _________, took a new turn in October when President Obama said that he would consider changing it if he were the team’s owner. Some, including many Native American groups, find the name objectionable.
39. On Oct. 22, a doctor in New York City who had recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea became the first person in the city to test positive for the virus. On Oct. 23, the governors of New York and New Jersey imposed a mandatory __________ on people arriving at two area airports who have had direct contact with those infected with Ebola. On Oct. 31, a judge in Maine rejected arguments by the state that the movements of Kaci Hickox, a nurse who had been held against her will after she returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, should be firmly restricted.
40. In the _________ on Nov. 4, resurgent Republicans took control of the Senate, expanded their hold on the House of Representatives, and defended some of the most closely contested governors’ races, in a repudiation of President Obama that will reorder the political map in his final years in office.
41. In November, _________ scored the fastest-selling album in 12 years with “1989,” then decided to remove her entire catalog from Spotify. The artist told Yahoo, “I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music.”
42. In a technological feat that gives scientists their first opportunity to dig into a remnant of the early solar system, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission successfully placed a small spacecraft on the surface of a speeding __________ on Nov. 12.
43. _________ triumphant return to the national stage as he celebrated his 77th birthday this year fell apart in the face of a wave of accusations by women who say he drugged and raped them decades ago.
44. A year after it opened, Disney estimated that _________, with its hit song “Let It Go,” has brought in more than $1 billion in retail revenue.
45. President Obama chose confrontation over conciliation on Nov. 20 as he asserted the powers of the Oval Office to reshape the nation’s _________ system. His directive will shield up to five million people.
46. On Nov. 24, a St. Louis County grand jury announced that it had brought no criminal charges against _________, a white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, more than three months ago in nearby Ferguson. Word of the decision set off a new wave of anger over what protesters called a pattern of police brutality against young black men.
47. A Staten Island grand jury on Dec. 3 ended the criminal case against a white New York police officer whose chokehold on __________, an unarmed black man, led to the man’s death. The decision drew condemnation from elected officials and touched off protests across the nation.
48. The Senate Intelligence Committee on Dec. 9 issued a sweeping indictment of the _________’s program to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, drawing on millions of internal C.I.A. documents to illuminate practices that it said were more brutal — and far less effective — than the agency acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public.
49. Heavily armed police officers ended a hostage siege in _________, Australia early Dec. 16, storming a downtown cafe where an armed man who was said to be a self-proclaimed sheikh had held employees and customers for more than 16 hours.
50. 2014 saw the deaths of many notable people, including Oscar-winning comedian _________, who died by suicide at 63, and writer _________, described by The Times as a “lyrical witness of the Jim Crow South.”
51. On Dec. 16, the _________ took their war on education to a ruthless new low with an assault on a crowded school in Peshawar that killed 145 people — 132 of them uniformed schoolchildren — in the deadliest single attack in the group’s history.
52. Sony Pictures Entertainment on Dec. 17 dropped plans for its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” a movie that depicts the assassination of the North Korean leader _________, after receiving a terror threat against theaters. The same day, American intelligence officials concluded that the North Korean government was centrally involved with devastating hacking attacks on Sony’s computers.
53. President Obama on Dec. 17 ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with _________ and the opening of an embassy there for the first time in more than a half-century as he vowed to “cut loose the shackles of the past” and sweep aside one of the last vestiges of the Cold War.
54. Two police officers sitting in their patrol car in New York City were shot at point-blank range and killed on Dec. 20 by a man who, officials said, had traveled to the city from Baltimore vowing to kill officers. Mayor _________, at the helm of a city still raw from weeks of protests after a grand jury’s decision, called for a suspension of the demonstrations, asked the public to report any possible threats against police officers and urged New Yorkers to thank and console officers in mourning.
55. Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501, an Airbus A320 airliner carrying 162 people, disappeared from radar screens early on Dec. 28, about 40 minutes after leaving the _________ city of Surabaya en route to Singapore. On Dec. 30, Indonesian rescue teams said that they had found bodies and what appeared to be debris from the flight in the Karimata Strait off the coast of Borneo.
- Ebola
- no-ransom
- immigration
- comet
- Cuba
- South Korea
- “12 Years a Slave”
- Germany
- Robin Williams
- women
- Maya Angelou
- quarantine
- Cleveland Cavaliers
- Bowe Bergdahl
- Bill Cosby
- Bill de Blasio
- Super Bowl
- Washington
- Syrian
- Indonesian
- Michael Brown
- unaccompanied minors
- Boko Haram
- Narendra Modi
- Malala Yousafzai
- carbon dioxide
- midterm elections
- Derek Jeter
- Sydney
- amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (A.L.S.)
- Liberia
- “Frozen”
- “Happy”
- Umbrella
- Taylor Swift
- Ray Rice
- Washington Redskins
- George Washington Bridge
- Eric Garner
- Alex Rodriguez
- Israeli teenagers
- Kim Jong-un
- Darren Wilson
- Taliban
- Sochi
- Scotland
- Secret Service
- pro-Russia separatists
- sexual assault
- General Motors
- Ukraine
- ISIS
- Malaysia Airlines
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Donald Sterling
- Crimea