As the year comes to a close, it’s time to take a look back at some of the most memorable events and images of 2018. Among the events covered in this essay (the last of a three-part photo summary of the year): midterm congressional elections in the United States, hurricanes and typhoons in Asia and North America, a contentious confirmation hearing for the U.S. Supreme Court, Brazil’s election of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro as its new president, a horrific attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and much more. See also: “Top 25 News Photos of 2018” and the 2018 in Photos: Part 1 and Part 2. The series comprises 120 images in all. Warning: Some of the photos may contain graphic or objectionable content.
2018 in Photos: Wrapping Up the Year
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People watch as a fire burns at the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro on September 2, 2018. The fire gutted the interior of the 200-year-old structure and destroyed more than 90 percent of the museum's 20 million objects and holdings. #
Ricardo Moraes / Reuters -
An aerial view from a Jiji Press helicopter shows vehicles piled in a heap due to strong winds in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Japan, on September 5, 2018, after Typhoon Jebi hit the country's west coast. The most powerful typhoon to hit Japan in a quarter century killed 17 people and left thousands stranded at a major airport. #
Jiji Press / AFP / Getty -
Serena Williams yells at the chair umpire Carlos Ramos during the women's final against Naomi Osaka of Japan on day 13 of the 2018 U.S. Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York on September 8, 2018. #
Danielle Parhizkaran / USA Today Sports / Reuters -
Dozens of landslides caused by an earthquake are seen in Atsuma town, Hokkaido, northern Japan, in this photo taken on September 7, 2018. The magnitude-6.6 quake killed 41 people on September 6, most of them dying due to the thousands of landslides that occurred on hillsides that had been saturated by a previous storm. #
Kyodo / Reuters -
U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jacob Stukenberg looks at the body of a Guatemalan immigrant, Misael Paiz, 25, who died in the Sonoran Desert after traveling more than 2,000 miles to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Pima County, Arizona, on September 10, 2018. Reuters traced the trail and the story of Paiz, a desperate rescue attempt, and the return of his body to his family in Guatemala. #
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Firefighters, part of one of the multiple emergency crews responding to a series of gas explosions and fires triggered by a problem with a gas line that feeds homes in several communities north of Boston, battle a house fire on Herrick Road in North Andover, Massachusetts, on September 13, 2018. #
Mary Schwalm / AP -
An image of the aftermath of Typhoon Mangkhut on September 17, 2018, taken in Hong Kong. The strongest tropical storm of the season, with winds as fast as 200 kilometers an hour, Mangkhut reportedly killed more than 125 people in the Philippines and another four in southern China. #
Lam Yik Fei / Getty -
Panicked dogs, left caged by an owner who fled rising floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, are rescued by the volunteer rescuer Ryan Nichols of Longview, Texas, in Leland, North Carolina, on September 16, 2018. #
Jonathan Drake / Reuters -
Nurses measure Ammar Khalid, 10 months old, as he undergoes treatment for severe acute malnutrition at a health clinic in Al Khawkhah, Yemen, on September 18, 2018. Khalid and his mother fled fighting in their village, which is on the front lines of conflict in Hodeidah province. A coalition military campaign had moved west along Yemen's coast toward Hodeidah, where bloody battles killed hundreds over the summer, putting the country's fragile food supply at risk. #
Andrew Renneisen / Getty -
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Chilean police officers march with puppies, future police dogs, during the celebratory parade for Chile's 208th independence anniversary in Santiago on September 19, 2018. #
Claudio Reyes / AFP / Getty -
Visitors celebrate in a beer tent on the opening day of the 2018 Oktoberfest beer festival on September 22, 2018, in Munich, Germany. Munich's Oktoberfest is the world's largest beer festival, and typically draws more than 6 million visitors. #
Alexandra Beier / Getty -
Bill Cosby is escorted out of the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Eagleville, Pennsylvania, after being sentenced to a three-to-10-year prison sentence for sexual assault on September 25, 2018. #
Jacqueline Larma / AP -
Women dressed as characters from the novel turned TV series The Handmaid's Tale stand in an elevator at the Hart Senate Office Building as the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh starts the first day of his confirmation hearing in front of the U.S. Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on September 4, 2018. #
Jim Watson / AFP / Getty -
The Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on September 27, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during a party in 1982, when they were high-school students in suburban Maryland. Kavanaugh testified in front of the panel, stridently rejecting the allegations of sexual abuse by Ford and two other women. Kavanaugh was later confirmed in a close vote and seated on the Supreme Court. #
Saul Loeb-Pool / Getty -
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A couple get married at Taft Point in California's Yosemite National Park on September 27, 2018. The viewpoint overlooks Yosemite Valley, including El Capitan, a popular vertical ascent for rock climbers across the globe. #
Amanda Lee Myers / AP -
A protester sits on the lap of Lady Justice on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court building while demonstrators storm the steps and doors as Brett Kavanaugh is inside being sworn in as an associate justice on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on October 6, 2018. #
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters -
An orange hue, known as "airglow," envelops Earth, a phenomenon that occurs when ultraviolet radiation hits molecules in the atmosphere and creates a band of light that reaches 50 to 400 miles high, in this image taken on board the International Space Station on October 7, 2018. #
NASA / Reuters -
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An aerial image of a hard-hit beachside neighborhood in Mexico Beach, Florida, a day after Hurricane Michael passed through, on October 11, 2018. To see what the neighborhood looked like pre-hurricane, view a Google Maps satellite image from 2012. #
mpi34 / MediaPunch / IPx -
A motorcycle drives in front of a stranded ship in a port hit by a tsunami on the coastline in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, on October 13, 2018. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which slammed into Indonesia's coastline, killed 2,256 people and destroyed or damaged more than 70,000 homes and larger structures. #
Jorge Silva / Reuters -
In this photo released by the Saudi Press Agency, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (right) shakes hands with Salah Khashoggi, a son of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on October 23, 2018. Salah Khashoggi had been summoned to meet with the crown prince, who many consider responsible for the killing of his father. The meeting came just days after Saudi Arabia acknowledged that Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in what it claimed was a "fistfight." #
Saudi Press Agency via AP -
Students from the Yeshiva School in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh pay their respects as the funeral procession for Jerry Rabinowitz passes their school en route to Homewood Cemetery following a funeral service at the Jewish Community Center on October 30, 2018. Rabinowitz was one of 11 people killed by an attacker while worshipping at the Tree of Life synagogue on October 27, 2018. #
Gene J. Puskar / AP -
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Supporters of the presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro celebrate in front of his residence in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October 28, 2018. The far-right congressman took a commanding lead in the race for Brazil's presidency, as voters apparently looked past warnings that the brash former army captain would erode democracy and embraced a chance for radical change after years of turmoil. Bolsonaro went on to win the election by a considerable margin. #
Leo Correa / AP -
Luis Acosta holds the 5-year-old Angel Jesus, both from Honduras, as a caravan of immigrants from Central America en route to the United States crossed through the Suchiate River into Mexico from Guatemala in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, on October 29, 2018. #
Adrees Latif / Reuters -
People cheer as President Donald Trump looks at them during a campaign rally at the Hertz Arena in Estero, Florida, on October 31, 2018, to help Republican candidates running in the upcoming election. #
Joe Raedle / Getty -
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A White House staff member reaches for the microphone held by CNN's Jim Acosta as he questions President Donald Trump during a news conference following the midterm elections at the White House in Washington, D.C., on November 7, 2018. The White House would later revoke Acosta's press credentials over this incident, claiming that he assaulted the staff member. CNN filed a lawsuit to have his credentials returned, which it dropped after the White House agreed to allow Acosta back—but with new, explicit rules of conduct in place. #
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters -
Asterion, a giant minotaur, performs in the streets of Toulouse as part of the French street-theater company La Machine's show Le Gardien du Temple on November 2, 2018, in Toulouse's city center. #
Eric Cabanis / AFP / Getty -
The British artist Rob Heard stands among rows of 72,396 shrouded figures, which form his piece of commemorative art Shrouds of the Somme, to mark the upcoming centenary of the end of World War I in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London on November 7, 2018. Each figure is a human form, individually shaped, shrouded, and made to correspond to a name of the 72,396 missing British and Commonwealth servicemen who were killed fighting in the Somme area of France between July 1, 1916, and March 20, 1918, who have no known grave, and whose names are engraved on the Thiepval Memorial in France. #
Matt Dunham / AP -
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel shake hands after unveiling a plaque during a French-German ceremony in the clearing of Rethondes ("the Glade of the Armistice") in Compiègne, France, on November 10, 2018, part of commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the November 11, 1918, armistice ending World War I. #
Philippe Wojazer / AFP / Getty -
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This aerial photo shows damage on Vine Road, south of Wasilla, Alaska, after earthquakes on November 30, 2018. Back-to-back earthquakes measuring magnitude 7.0 and 5.7 shattered highways and rocked buildings in Anchorage and the surrounding area, sending people running into the streets and briefly triggering a tsunami warning for islands and coastal areas south of the city. #
Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News via AP -
Protesters wearing yellow vests stand near a burning car during clashes near the Place de l'Étoile in France on December 1, 2018. The "yellow vest" anti-government demonstrations are some of the most destructive the country has seen in years. #
Stephane Mahe / Reuters -
Former U.S. President George H. W. Bush's service dog, Sully, pays his respects as Bush's body lies in state in the Rotunda at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on, December 4, 2018. Bush died at his home in Houston on November 30, at the age of 94. #
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
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