Revelations by a Senate Intelligence Committee in December detailing the extent of the CIA’s torture programme instituted in the months after 9/11 reverberated around the world, while forcing America into an uncomfortable introspection as to the values that should define the Republic. Yet the report was just one piece of remarkable news emanating from the United States towards the end of 2014.
In the same month, Washington moved to normalise diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than half a century of hostility, while protesters marched through towns and cities demanding an end to the killing of unarmed black men by officers of the law.
Fears of an Ebola outbreak dominated the news in September after Thomas Eric Duncan became the first Ebola patient to die in the US having travelled to Texas from Liberia. Officials scrambled to allay the fears of the citizenry by placing some doctors returning from Africa into quarantine, though the virus would go on to claim only one more victim on American soil.
In politics, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie spent much of the year mired in scandal, diminishing his chances of a serious tilt at the presidency in 2016, while the midterm elections in November gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress, setting the stage for a difficult end to the Obama administration.
Below we chart the 10 biggest US news stories of 2014: