2020 Year in Review

  • Posted by JGlenn
  • On 27 December 2020
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2020 Year in Review (not listed in any priority; non-scientific, subjective  review by Jerome.Glenn@Millennium-Project.org) plus previous annual reviews back to 2020

  1. COVID-19 brought the world to a grinding halt, increased tele-everything & AI
  2. The pandemic caused first global “time out’ for humanity to rethink everything
  3. The Internet connects about 60% of humanity: 5 billion people
  4. US President Trump Impeached
  5. CERN has contained antimatter (antihydrogen) for 24 hours.
  6. Iranian General Qasem Soleimani killed in US drone strike
  7. UK withdraws from the EU
  8. Tokyo Summer Olympics postponed to 2021
  9. Polio eradicated from Africa
  10. At least 1.5 billion students were out of school at the peak of the pandemic
  11. The world fell into recession caused by the Covid pandemic -4.4% decline
  12. Stock Market falls 2997 points on March 9th then passes historical high of 30,000
  13. Jeff Bezos becomes first to have a net worth over $200 billion.
  14. Carbon emissions fell a record 7%, yet CO2 ppm rises to new records
  15. 2020 likely to be hottest or second hottest year on record.
  16. Over 1.3 million recreational drones in US; 100+ countries have military drones
  17. 995 satellites were launched in 2020; nearly 3000 satellites orbit the earth today
  18. Deinococcus Radiodurans bacteria adapted its DNA to live in outer space
  19. Black Lives Matter movement in the US spreads worldwide
  20. China announced a quantum computer calculated in 200 seconds at room temperature what a supercomputer would take 2.5 billion years to complete.
  21. Joe Biden beats Donald Trump for the US presidency
  22. First Asian-Black Woman elected Vice President of the United States
  23. Worst invasion of desert locusts in East Africa in 70 years
  24. Japan brought back samples from an asteroid 300+ million kilometers away
  25. 42 journalists killed for being journalists
  26. Terrorism deaths fell for the past five years
  27. UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco, Bhutan create diplomatic relations with Israel
  28. Beirut Lebanon Port massive explosion kills 190 people August 4th
  29. Hong Kong public uprising against PRC’s national security law for Hong Kong
  30. Climate change leads to record number of hurricanes, fires, and floods
  31. Political polarization continues to worsen; social discord increases
  32. Video conferencing goes mainstream for friends, education, work, and health
  33. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death brings new conservative U.S. Supreme Court
  34. Plant-based hamburgers become available in fast food restaurants
  35. Crisper gene editing for home test to identify COVID RNA for precision testing.
  36. SpaceX brings crew to the Space Station, as first private space craft to do that.
  37. Vaccines made in record time and first time from mRNA by Pfizer and Moderna
  38. Venezuela, Yemen, and Syria continue downward spiral
  39. Elon Musk’s Neuralink fabricated computer-connected fibers to individual neurons in the brain of pigs
  40. China plants PRC flag on the moon during lunar sample return
  41. Thousands of 12,500 years old cave paintings alone 8 miles long in the Amazon
  42. Largest set of cyber-attacks hit the United States

For comparison, my annual lists since 2010:

2019 Year in Review (not listed in any priority)

  1. Public quantum computing via the IBM cloud; Google (54 qubits) quantum supremacy (not publically available) passed China which has 50-cubit device.
  2. First photo of a Black Hole
  3. Atmospheric CO2 reached 411 ppm in May 2019 (in May 1958 in was 317.5)
  4. Global Warming declared emergency by 11,000 scientists in BioScience
  5. Greta Thunberg of Sweden triggers increased attention to global warming
  6. China first to land on the dark side of the Moon.
  7. Islamic State (ISIL) lost its land; Russia/Turkey take land left by the US
  8. Public protests in Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, Haiti, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kashmir (Internet Blackout by India Lebanon. London, Montenegro, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe
  9. US-China trade war
  10. President Trump Impeached
  11. Brussels Bans 5G due to insufficient health/biological impact studies
  12. Over 400 mass shootings in the USA
  13. US Stock Market hits record Dow passes 28,621. 
  14. Measles increasingly spread worldwide due to lower vaccination rates
  15. North Korea continues to test missiles in volition of UN Security Council
  16. Brexit continues in limbo
  17. Notre Dame burns in Paris
  18. Same-Sex Marriage Legalized in Taiwan and Austria
  19. China increases facial AI surveillance; San Francisco bans facial recognition
  20. Space X launches 60 Internet Satellites
  21. Ebola Vaccine approved, while Ebola in the Congo continues
  22. Chip-to-chip quantum teleportation and multi-photon entanglement in silicon
  23. Large areas of the Amazon rain forests burn out of control
  24. A 315-billion tonne iceberg broke off Antarctica.
  25. Neurolink connects single neurons to single sensors connected to external computer
  26. Finland elects the youngest PM in the world.
  27. US pulls out of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)
  28. Volkswagen Beetle production ends
  29. First NASA all-female spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
  30. Venice flooding emergency
  31. Pope Francis abolishes pontifical secrecy in sex abuse cases
  32. Deep fake software publically available decentralized information warfare
  33. Plant-based hamburgers go mainstream in KFC, Berger King, McDonalds, others
  34. Venezuela, Yemen, and Syria continue downward spiral
  35. 50th Anniversary of the first Moon Landing, ARPANET, and Woodstock.

2018 Year in Review (not listed in any priority)

  1. Fusion maintained for 100 seconds Wendelstein 7-X
  2. North and South Korea teams together in Winter Olympics; allowed family visits
  3. China doctor uses  CRISPR-cas9  for first gene edited embryo (to prevent AIDS)
  4. IBM’s Project Debater AI defeated a human in a debate
  5. China’s constitution changed to allow President Xi Jinping to rule for life
  6. Syria, Venezuela, Yemen continue to get worse
  7. Over half the world is middle class (US$ 11-110/day)
  8. Democrats regain US House of Representatives
  9. China-US trade scansions, and NY Stock market volatility
  10. Political leadership uncertain in US, UK, France, and Germany while political leadership seems more certain in Russia and China
  11. Stephen Hawking dies
  12. Canada legalizes Marijuana (Uruguay did before)
  13. US Government reports global warming  forecasts are more serious than before;
  14. 4th hottest year on record; 20 of earth’s hottest years occurred in last 22 years
  15. CO2 ppm reached 411.24 in May 2018; May 1998 it was 369.42
  16. NASA returned to Mars for analysis inside of the planet
  17. Several Russian strategic nuclear bombers land in Venezuela
  18. 107 of 109 space launches successful; SpaceX delivered 64 satellites on one rocket
  19. Elon Musk launched a Tesla car in space to test payload capacity of new rocket
  20. China launched spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon in January
  21. Voyager 2 left the solar system (Voyager 1 left in 2012)
  22. Apple reaches US$1 Trillion value, then falls back a few months later
  23. Extreme weather caused 4th highest number of insured losses
  24. About 2 million drones fly in the US expect dramatic increases worldwide
  25. 10-minute cancer test developed in Australia
  26. Saudi Arabia lets women drive, but executes a journalist in their embassy
  27. France beat Croatia to win the World Cup
  28. 5G wireless telecommunications technology
  29. US President Trump pulls out of Iran agreement
  30. Russian Information Warfare attacks found far more invasive on US election than previously knows via Instagram,  Facebook, Twitter and others
  31. Over 200 top US executives, politicians, entertainers,  fired for sexual misconduct
  32. Based on program upgrades, four additional binary black hole mergers detected from data recorded in 2015, 2016, and 2017 – bringing the total to 10 black hole mergers and one binary neutron-star merger

2017 Year in Review (not listed in any priority)

  1. Most babies born this year are likely to see the year 2100
  2. Me Too Movement knocks out stars in politics, sports, and the media, and spreads around the world exposing male abuse of women
  3. First successful human embryo genetically edited
  4. China announced quantum entanglement between satellite and ground station
  5. Putin denies thousands of Russian-sourced bots targeted at specific US voter-groups and regions via Twitter and Facebook accounts with thousands of hate-Hillary and pro-Trump messages reaching over 100 million US voters
  6. Donald Trump became US President with 3 million fewer votes than Hilary
  7. President Trump announced withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and UNESCO, while recognizing Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel
  8. Mugabe ousted in Zimbabwe, Zuma ousted in South Africa, Yahya Jammeh ousted in Gambia
  9. Venezuela accelerates its downward spiral
  10. Cultural genocide, mass killings, rapes of Rohingya by Myanmar Army
  11. 2017 likely be the hottest year on record in the absence of the El Niño; July 2017 had tied July and August 2016 as the hottest month on record
  12. SwissRe estimated global warming assisted natural disasters during 2017 cost insurance industry about US$100 billion (Caribbean hurricanes cost $290 billion)
  13. Yemen : 1 million got Cholera; 8 million near starvation; water nearly gone
  14. EU fines Google $2.7 Billion for anti-trust activities
  15. Bitcoin hits $19,500 before retreating; NY’s Dow hits record 24,792
  16. SpaceX relaunched and re-landing a used Falcon 9 rocket booster saving $18 million per launch.
  17. Xi Jinping sets 5-year agenda at China’s 19th Party Congress China including the Belt and Road massive infrastructure program and AI leadership by 2030
  18. North Korea has 2,000 full-time hackers into financial systems (BBC)
  19. First observation of gravitational waves from collision of two neutron stars.
  20. North Korea tests hydrogen bomb and ICBM capable of reaching the USA
  21. Quantum entanglement with 10 qubits on a superconducting circuit achieved
  22. Defeat of ISIS/ISIL/IS control of Mosul most of the lands it had controlled
  23. Australia became the 25th country to legalize same-sex marriage
  24. Narrow AI proliferates from medical diagnosis to home assistants; even an AI robot opened a conference in South Korea and given citizenship in Saudi Arabia
  25. Emmanuel Macron provides a new face for European leadership

2016 Year in Review (not listed in any priority)

  1. Paris Agreement on Climate Change entered into force
  2. Hottest year on record (again) and highest CO2 ppm in recorded history
  3. Rapid progress in genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9
  4. Syrian conflict continues to get worse
  5. ISIL loses most of its territory
  6. Colombian Government and FARC end longest bar in Latin America
  7. IAEA verifies Iran met Nuclear Framework Agreement goals
  8. Google’s AlphaGo Beat Korean Go champion
  9. AI’s rapid proliferation from Google’s Translate to Amazon ‘s Echo
  10. Brexit
  11. First vertical return landing of space rocket
  12. Fidel Castro and John Glenn  die
  13. Microsoft’s HoloLens
  14. Failed Military Coup in Turkey
  15. OECD adds Latvia as 35th Member
  16. Zika Virus spreads across the Americas
  17. Summer Olympics in Rio Janeiro, Brazil
  18. North Korea conducts 5th Nuclear Test,  claims a hydrogen bomb test
  19. Bob Dylan gets Nobel Prize for Literature
  20. Putin orders cyber-attacks, fake news, infowar against Hillary Clinton’s election
  21. Hillary Clinton wins USA vote; Donald Trump wins electoral college
  22. ICC sentences Ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić to 40 years
  23. 214,000 offshore companies’ 11.5 million documents exposed in Panama
  24. NASA’s  Juno went into Jupiter’s orbit on July 4th
  25. US and Russia stay in the International Space Station for record 340 days
  26. Baby born in Mexico with DNA from 3 parents (mitochondrial transfer)
  27. Ecuador and Italy get major Earthquakes
  28. 70 year old Indian women gave birth to baby
  29. 20th Anniversary of The Millennium Project (smile).

2015 Year in Review (not listed in any priority)

  1. UN Climate Change Agreement in Paris
  2. Hottest year on record
  3. Gene editing made much easier via CRISPR, could alter human evolution by germ-line engieering
  4. Gravitational waves detected from the collision of two black holes
  5. Running water discovered on Mars
  6. Skin cells turned into stem cells
  7. Mass migration into Europe
  8. Rise of ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daesh and Boko Haram
  9. Russia takes Crimea
  10. Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement
  11. Greek financial crisis
  12. Earthquake in Nepal nearly 9000 die
  13. US-China joint global warming statement on new goals
  14. Pope’s Encyclical Letter on global warming
  15. Solar Impluse – solar electric airplane circumnavigates the globe
  16. US-Cuba opens diplomatic relations
  17. US Supreme Court ruling same-sex marriages legal
  18. Global Je suis Charlie demonstrations against ISIL attacks in Paris
  19. Russian plane shot down over Egypt
  20. Nuclear Framework Agreement with Iran
  21. 3D printing and drones became mainstream
  22. China expands Island construction in South China Sea
  23. Environmental movement is back: Keystone XL Pipeline & Climate Agreement
  24. Carteret Islands environmental (sea-level) refugees (Papua New Guinea)
  25. Most UN Millennium Development Goals reached for 2015; Sustainable Development Goals set 2030
  26. 70th Anniversary of the United Nations
  27. Fly-by of Pluto video transmission received
  28. Vertical landing of two kinds of reusable rocket sections.
  29. Price of oil falls dramatically
  30. Costs of security for public spaces and cyberspace increase dramatically

2014 Year in Review (not listed in any priority)

  1. US-China joint cooperation on reducing greenhouse gases
  2. Record growth in US and China’s stock markets
  3. 127 billionaires have pledged to give half their wealth to philanthropic causes
  4. 2014 expected to be the hottest year in recorded history
  5. CO2 emissions estimated to be 2.3% more than in 2013.
  6. Hybrid synthetic DNA replicated and grew (A third base pare (d5SICS and dNaM) added to natural E.coli DNA two base pairs (A-T & C-G)
  7. India’s spacecraft reached Mars; European‘s spacecraft landed on a comet
  8. Antares rocket, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic spacecrafts crash/blowup
  9. Syrian civil war continues over 2 million refugees
  10. Syrian chemical weapons surrendered
  11. ISIS, then ISIL, then IS beheadings; new US and others‘ airstrikes in Iraq/Syria
  12. One Malaysian Airplane disappears, another shot down over the Ukraine
  13. Russia takes Crimea and invades Ukraine (said with military volunteers)
  14. Falling oil prices, falling Ruble, and increasing inflation in Russia
  15. Mt Gox largest Bitcoin exchange failure
  16. Ebola kills 7,000 across West Africa (many more die of Malaria each year)
  17. 3D Printer on the International Space Station prints a socket wrench
  18. Private drones and computer rist watches begin to proliferate
  19. Argentine court gave Orangutan personhood rights for bodily autonomy.
  20. Pope Francis criticizes Vatican management for pathology of power
  21. First successful use of Simon’s algorithm on D-wave quantum computing
  22. Brain to brain computer mediated communications demonstrated
  23. A computer program Board of Directors Member for Deep Knowledge Ventures
  24. Panama and Suez Canals massive expansions
  25. Over half of all animals gone in less than 50 years (Living Planet Index)
  26. Malala Yousafzai shares Nobel Prize for Peace
  27. US-Cuba diplomatic relations
  28. New Government in Iraq
  29. US combat troops leave Afghanistan

2013 Year in Review

  1. New Pope sets a new tone for the 1.2 billion Roman Catholics
  2. Global Slavery Index estimates there are about 30 million slaves in 2013.
  3. Nearly 40% of humanity uses the Internet
  4. Malala Yousafzai survives Taliban assassination and becomes a new world force
  5. Nelson Mandela’s passing reminds the world of greatness
  6. The largest petition to recall a government in history:  22 million sign petition in Egyptian for Morsi’s resignation
  7. Egyptian military crackdown on the Moslem Brotherhood
  8. China lands a robot rover on the Moon, India launches spacecraft to Mars
  9. Elon Musk continues private sector space program SpaceX Falcon 9 launching a geostationery satellite at 1/3 the cost
  10. Syrian Civil War worsens while it agreed to disarm chemical weapons
  11. Hassan Rouhani opens Iran to the West and signs nuclear processing agreement
  12. No. Korean conducts 3rd underground nuclear bomb test and executes Pres’s uncle
  13. China tensions with Japan & neighbors increase; US & China warships monitor
  14. US Affordable Health Care Website problems
  15. CO2 passes 400 parts per million in the atmosphere; 2013 7th hottest year recorded
  16. Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines with the most powerful tropical storm to make landfall on record with gusts reaching 235 mph.
  17. Shanghai and California initiate cap and trade systems
  18. First hamburger publically cooked and tested from pure meat tissue grown without growing a cow
  19. UN adopts the Arms Trade Treaty of conventional weapons
  20. Edward Snowden release of US intelligence wiretapping heads of state.
  21. Largest meteor in a century hits Russian city of Chelyabinsk
  22. USA makes recreational use of marijuana legal in Colorado and Washington and Uruguay becomes the first country to make it legal to produce and sale marajuana
  23. US Government shutdow for 16 days; Tea Party begins to lose power in the US
  24. Human adult cell nuclei inserted in egg cells with previous nuclei removed that produced new embryonic stem cells clonded for new stem cell line.
  25. Higgs particle confirmed that gives rise to matter
  26. Google Glass demonstrated
  27. President Obama annouces Human Brain Initiative
  28. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report
  29. The were 628 recorded cyber-attacks over a 24 hour period on July 24, 2013 with majority targeting the USA

2012 Year in Review

  1. Humanity continues to be succeeding /winning more than it is losing, according to the 28 variables in the State of the Future Index
  2. Higgs-like Particle discovered that may explain how matter is created
  3. Skydive from the edge of space (24 miles) going faster than sound (Mach 1.24)
  4. Moslem Brotherhood takes over the leadership of Egypt
  5. Egypt’s Morsi goes from world hero (cease fire agreement) to world pariah dictator within 24 hours
  6. China and its ocean neighbors contest boundaries increasing tensions wit`h and  among  Japan, Philippians, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei
  7. North Korea successfully launches intercontinental missile for orbital satellite
  8. Wikipedia and others went dark to successfully block the US Congress’s SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act).
  9. Big Data becomes popular subject for decisionmakers to explore how to use
  10. China’s third human space launch carring the first Chinese woman into space  rendezvoused with China’s Space Lab
  11. SpaceX’s Dragon is the first successful private sector station re-supply vehicle 
  12. Mars Landing of Curiosity Robot
  13. China proposes space power collaboration with India
  14. Driverless cars by Google are legal in US (California, Florida, and Nevada)
  15. President Obama’s endorsement of Gay Marriage
  16. London Olympics – nurtures spirit of world peace
  17. Facebook’s IPO financial loss
  18. Pope’s assistant exposes some of the Vatican’s inner political corruption.
  19. Severe political stalemate in Washington, D.C., US continues
  20. More than 100 journalists have been killed so far this year, making 2012 the deadliest year for media since UNESCO began keeping records on the issue
  21. Syria’s civil war accellorates.
  22. Likely 2012 will be the hottest year in US recorded history
  23. Climate continues to change: USA is 60% in drought, super hurricane Sandy, heavy flooding in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Singapore, UK
  24. Euro financial crisis continues with riots especially in Greece and Spain

2011 Year in Review

  1. World grew to 7 billion people
  2. Arab Spring/Awakening
  3. Occupy Movements initially on Wall Street
  4. Other protests took to the streets in Greece, Russia, China, Spain, others
  5. Japan Disasters
  6. Tenth Anniversary of 911 Terrorist Attacks                                                                                                            
  7. Bin Laden Killed                                           
  8. US pulled out of Iraq
  9. Steve Jobs Died
  10. Tablet computers
  11. Space Shuttle retired
  12. China produced more cars that the US or Japan                                                                                                                      
  13. Severe political stalemate in Washington, D.C., US
  14. Robot 25% of Japan over 65 years old
  15. Robonaut 2 humanoid robot (without legs) on International Space Station
  16. IBM Watson computer beats human Jeopardy champions
  17. Super High Vision 7,680 by 4,320 parcels created by Sharp is 16 times HD resolution
  18. Brittan’s Royal Wedding
  19. Unprecedented volume of Methane found bubbling up from shallow Arctic sea floor
  20. Large Hadron Collider discovered a particle composed of a quark and anti-quark
  21. Programmable quantum photonic chip
  22. 26 Year old in charge of nuclear weapons in North Korea
  23. More Internet users in China than the entire population of the USA

2010 year in review

  1. 2010 was the warmest year the earth has yet recorded.
  2. China passed Japan in 2010 to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States, and has the second largest number of billionaires in the world.
  3. BP Gulf Oil catastrophe
  4. Wikileaks
  5. Philippines may pass India this year as the largest call center than India – Financial Times.
  6. Airports across Europe closed for a week by Volcano ash (Eyjafjallajökull) causing chaos for millions.
  7. North Korea’s sinking a South Korean ship and shelling one of its islands.
  8. Stuxnet computer worms attacking Iran’s nuclear program.
  9. Financial crises and severe government cut backs across much of Europe.
  10. Synthetic biology breakthrough creating an artificial life form.
  11. US health care law
  12. Haitian earth quake and cholera, Pakistan floods
  13. Mexican organized crime violence continues to escalate
  14. More electronic than paper books sold by Amazon.
  15. Tea Pot boils in the USA
  16. Sarah Palin shots a defenseless animal.
  17. Gays ok in US Military.
  18. Polar Ice continues to melt faster than forecasted, while few results in Copenhagen and Cancun.
  19. Frozen water discovered on the Moon – One the lunar pole about 600 million metric tons (158 billion gallons) in 40 craters.
  20. H1N1 declared a pandemic
  21. US combat troops out of Iraq
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