The conflict in Syria started more than two years ago, but it reached a tipping point on Aug. 21 when President Bashar al-Assad's regime allegedly launched a deadly chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus, violating international regulations and inciting worldwide outrage.
Since then, tension has been high as President Obama contemplates retaliation against Assad, and the U.S. Congress will vote on military intervention next week. The interactive timeline below summarizes the events of the last two weeks, following the alleged chemical attacks, which the U.S. government says killed 1,429 people.
See also: War in Syria: Interactive Map Outlines Major Battle Zones
The timeline incorporates various elements: a blue line that charts the volume of local language tweets in Arabic; a red line that charts the English tweets; colored bubbles indicating the most popular hashtags (blue for local, red for English); and vertical lines that plot the main events.

SumAll, a non-profit with the self-defined goal of "doing social good by analyzing data," collected tweets, most-tweeted images, news sources and official UN statistics to create this snapshot of the events that have led the U.S. to the brink of another military intervention in the Middle East.
According to Stefan Heeke, SumAll's executive director, the team put together this timeline to give the public direct, unfiltered access to global issues and crises via available data.
Image: Abo Al-Nur Sadk/Afp/Getty Images. Interactive timeline courtesy of SumAll.org