By the time you read this, there is at least a month of separation between you and the raging hellfire we call the Year 2020. Perhaps you’ve already mentally suppressed everything that happened during the time between January 1 and December 31. Or perhaps you still feel like you’ve never truly left that year. After all, the pandemic is still raging on, our country is more unstable than ever, and the monotonous Google Meet after Google Meet of virtual schooling still doesn’t seem to have improved. But it’s important to stand back and look at the whole picture. Yes, everything is still burning, but you’ve survived the worst of the inferno. You might not remember everything that happened in the timeline (trust me, a lot happened), but importantly, we lived through it all, together. With that said, here is the definitive timeline of every major event that happened in the year 2020.
JANUARY
2020 began in a very thematically appropriate way: everyone was terrified about WWIII causing the end of the world. On January 3, General Qassem Suleimani, one of the most powerful leaders of Iran, was killed in an US airstrike. Five days later, Iran launched ballistic missiles against military bases housing US soldiers. A war between the US and Iran seemed imminent, but the apocalypse fated for 2020 wasn’t going to be another World War. The situation de-escalated, and a war was avoided for now. In other news, Australia continued to struggle against intense wildfires carried over from 2019, which were burning away millions of acres of land, killing hundreds of millions of animals and displacing thousands of people.
In the US, the Senate began the impeachment trial of Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in regards to Trump’s attempt to solicit help from Ukraine to win the elections. Kobe Bryant, the basketball legend, died after a helicopter crash. Forebodingly, on the 30th, the WHO declared that the outbreak of a newly discovered coronavirus was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
FEBRUARY
On February 5, the Senate voted to acquit Trump of the charges brought against him in his impeachment trial. The new coronavirus, now named COVID-19, claimed its first life in the US. On a more positive note, at the Academy Awards, the South Korean movie Parasite won best picture, becoming the first non-English film to do so.
MARCH
On March 11, COVID-19 was declared by the World Health Organization to be a pandemic. Two days later, ICSD closed down, with the goal of reopening in April. As the pandemic continued to worsen, its effects increased in magnitude. The stock market crashed, borders began to close, and the Olympics were delayed until 2021. In US politics, the remaining candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for the 2020 US Presidential Election combined Voltron-style to back Joe Biden against Bernie Sanders.
APRIL
All of ICSD remained closed as reopening dates were continuously pushed back. Meanwhile, in the outside world, the pandemic raged on, infecting over a million people in the US, while the first asymptomatic cases were reported. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic race, making Joe Biden the de-facto Democratic nominee for the election. $1,200 stimulus checks, all signed by President Donald Trump, were distributed to US citizens.
MAY
Domestically, the US faced invasion at the mandibles of the murder hornets, who threatened domestic honey bees. In Minneapolis and across the rest of the US, Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and racial injustice flared up, incited by the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who had died on May 25 in Minneapolis after a police officer, knelt on his neck, for an initially-reported eight minutes and 46 seconds. In the following weeks, thousands of protestors gathered together to protest his unjust death at the hands of police. These protests spread to other cities and countries and would continue in the coming months. Internationally, geopolitical tensions spread as Chinese and Indian troops clashed along their border (though luckily without weapons). In Venezuela, a coup supported by security company Silvercorp USA failed to overthrow Nicolás Maduro. And in Hong Kong, the Chinese government made the decision to impose a new security law, which would be passed in June, leading to crackdowns on protests and activists.
JUNE
The Black Lives Matter protests continued, despite brutal crackdowns by police. Protests in Seattle occupied Capitol Hill and declared it to be an “autonomous zone” and “occupied protest”. The old state flag of Mississippi, the last to feature the Confederate battle flag, was retired. ICSD students bid farewell to a tumultuous academic year.
JULY
Federal troops cracked down on Black Lives Matter protests in Portland as President Trump announced a surge of federal troops to Democratic cities. The president also commuted the prison sentence of his former advisor Roger Stone and suggested delaying the presidential election. On Twitter, numerous prominent accounts, such as Joe Biden’s Twitter account, were hacked and started to promote a Bitcoin scam before the hack was locked down by Twitter.
AUGUST
Wildfires and a hurricane raged in the US. In California, a wildfire that would become the largest in the state’s history started in its northern region. Other wildfires erupted in Oregon and Washington, costing nearly $20 billion in total. Hurricane Laura made landfall in Louisiana to become the strongest hurricane ever experienced by the state, killing 42 people and causing 19 billion dollars worth of damages. On August 28, Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman died of colon cancer. In Beirut, Lebanon, a massive explosion caused by a stockpile of ammonium nitrate shook the city, killed hundreds, and led to protests and the resignation of the Lebanese government. In Belarus, protestors rejecting the results of the reelection of president Lukashenko in an election that was neither free nor fair participated in the largest political march in the country’s history.
SEPTEMBER
Students across Ithaca and the rest of the country returned to school, though for some, it was only in a virtual capacity. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by Amy Coney Barett. Trump debated Joe Biden in what was quite possibly the most disorderly presidential debate in the nation’s history. Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war against each other over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, legally owned by Azerbaijan but home to many ethnic Armenians.
OCTOBER
On the first day of the month, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump caught COVID-19. On October 10th, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire, ending the Nagorno-Karabakh war, with Azerbaijan having come out on top. In Thailand, mass protests began, seeking reform to the country’s monarchy.
NOVEMBER
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the US Presidential Election, becoming the 46th President-elect of the United States. Trump contested the results, and falsely alleged that he was the actual winner of the election. The president then initiated lawsuits, hoping to overturn the results of the election. Around the same time as the elections, the US formally withdrew from the Paris Agreement, an agreement between countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help prevent climate change. However, the Biden administration is expected to rejoin the Agreement. Two intense hurricanes, Hurricane Eta and Hurricane Iota, slammed into Central America, killing a combined total of 250 people. According to scientists at Yale, the recent intensification of hurricanes is a direct result of climate change. In Florida, the first operational crewed SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft took off from Kennedy Space Center toward the International Space Station.
DECEMBER
A new and more infectious variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 started to spread rapidly in the UK. On December 4, the World Health Organization estimated that over 65 million people were infected with COVID-19, resulting in more than 1.5 million deaths, with an average of 10,000 deaths per day over the past week. However, vaccines for COVID-19 finally began to be distributed in the US and around the world.
You probably weren’t impacted by all of the events listed above, but many of them definitely did play a major role in your life. Importantly though, you’ve survived through them. While 2021 will have difficulties and challenges of its own, there will never be another 2020. Here’s to hoping that 2021 will be a better year.