20 crazy global events that occurred in 2020
The main news story of 2020 and, depressingly, continuing into 2021 was/is the Coronavirus pandemic. But this wasn’t the only shocking event to mar a really terrible year, so we thought we’d look back on some of the crazy events that unfurled around the world throughout the awful last 12 months.
From natural disasters and human violence to the truly unexplainable, we’ve explored 20 of the craziest things that happened in 2020, which don’t even go near any of the batshit crazy things that Donald Trump did.
1. Australian bushfires killed 33
Bushfires in New South Wales and Victoria, which lasted until March, were declared the worst the country had ever seen, killing at least 33 people, destroying thousands of buildings and around 126,000 square kilometres of land.
2. A Thai soldier live-streamed a mass shooting
In February, Thai soldier Sgt. Jakrapanth Thomma opened fire in a shopping centre in Korat, killing 26 people and injury 57 more. Prior to that attack, he’d also killed his commander and two other people at a military base, then escaped in a stolen vehicle, a gun and ammo. He even live-streamed the mall attack on Facebook before being shot dead by snipers.
3. The Stock Market crashed
On 12 February 2020, the Dow Jones had reached a record high of 29,551.42. However, the COVID pandemic caused a huge crash less than a month later. On 9 March, it fell 7.79% to 23,851.02 points, which then was the worst drop in history, then another 9.99% drop on 12 March to 21,200.62. Four days later, it hit a record 12.93% freefall by dropping to 20,188.52. The result of these drops was the launch of a “bear market,” ending an 11-year “bull market.”
4. Fires spread Chernobyl radiation
In April, forest fires in the 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl caused a spike in radiation levels. The area was vacated after the devastating chemical reactor explosion in 1986, but human carelessness leads to large-scale fires on an annual basis. These fires led to background radiation levels of 2.3 micro Sievert per hour, compared to the maximum allowable amount of 0.5.
5. The worst-ever Canadian mass shooting
Also in April, a man dressed as a policeman and driving a car designed to look like a police car started randomly shooting people in various locations across Nova Scotia. Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people, including a female Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, then got into a car chase with police before being killed in the confrontation. That makes it the most deadly mass shooting in Canadian history.
6. The Pentagon released evidence of UFOs
Not only has the US government recognised the existence of an official body investigating UFO sightings, it also officially released video evidence of them in April. The videos were taken by Navy pilots and first published by the New York Times in 2017 and the Pentagon refers to them as “unidentified aerial phenomena.”
7. Swarms of locusts afflicted East Africa
Trillions of locusts swarmed across East Africa and even into Asia in apocalyptic plagues of biblical proportions. The swarms, which were caused by warm wet weather at the end of 2019 giving the insects ideal breeding conditions, destroyed crops, which run the risk of famine and economic damage if they weren’t brought under control. One swarm alone can contain 80 million adult locusts and destroyed crops in an area that contains one-fifth of the world’s most acutely food-insecure people, across countries like Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. The issue was still ongoing as of December 2020 and is expected to resurface through 2021.
8. US police shot 999 of their own citizens
On 25 May, George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, which was the catalyst for Black Lives Matters protests across the world and high-profile demands for social equality that continue to this day. In June, Rayshard Broks was shot and killed by an Atlanta police officer. Three months later, video emerged of Jacob Blake being shot in the back as he tried to get into a car in Kenosha, which sparked protects across Wisconsin. These stories are far from cases in isolation as fatal police shootings remain worryingly high, with 999 people officially shot dead by the police in 2020, according to a Statista report, let alone shocking stories of further racism and police brutality.
9. A massive cyclone struck the Bay of Bengal
In May, Cyclone Ampham struck Bangladesh and India, killing more than 100 people, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, and affecting the lives of millions. It’s thought to be one of the strongest storms ever to hit the Bay of Bengal and only the fourth so-called super cyclone to hit West Bengal, with the others recorded in 1582, 1737, 1833 and 1942. At its peak, on 18 May, the storm reached wind speeds of 160 miles per hour, which were sustained for around one minute. It caused an estimated $13 billion of damage, making it the costliest ever to affect the region.
10. The Michigan Dam broke
Also in May, heavy rain caused failures on Michigan dam that left more than 10,000 people homeless. The extreme weather caused the Tittabawassee River to crest at more than 35 feet, overflow its banks and breach two dams. But luckily, no-one was hurt.
11. China and India started a weird military face-off
The month of May also saw the beginning of a military standoff between Asian giants China and India. The troops of both nations have been engaged in various clashes, face-offs, melees and skirmishes along the border of the two countries, the Sino-Indian border. One such incident on 15 and 16 June apparently saw 20 Indian soldiers and one Chinese soldier killed and reports of troops from both sides being taken captive, which both deny. Shots were then fired on 7 September, with both sides — probably unsurprisingly — blaming the other.
The face-off is thought to be as a result of India responding to China encroaching into its territory, which China considers its “territorial integrity.” Other theories include India’s growing relationship with the US, which China sees as a threat.
12. A 17-year-old hacked Bill Gates’ Twitter
A hacking group led by a 17-year-old from Tampa hacked into the accounts of targeted, high-profile individuals and organizations, including Apple, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, and Uber, in July. The attack, considered one of the largest ever on Twitter, earned the hackers over $120,000 worth of Bitcoin in one day. It is thought to have occurred as a result of the group launching a phishing attack against Twitter employees.
13. Wildfires engulfed the West Coast
Between July and December, wildfires covered an area of more than 8.1 million acres and 33,000 square kilometres across California, Oregon and Washington. The fires, thought to have been caused by a combination of climate change and poor forest management, fueled by the dry, hot terrain, and fanned by strong winds, killed at least 37 people and destroyed tens of thousands of buildings.
14. A chemical explosion caused a 3.3 magnitude seismic blast
A huge cargo of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in the port of Beirut, in Lebanon, on 4 August. The substance, which was equivalent to 1,100 metric tons of TNT, had been stored without appropriate safety measures for six years but the cause of the blast remains under investigation. It caused a seismic blast of 3.3 magnitude, which makes it one of the most powerful non-nuclear, artificial explosions of all time.
15. Is it a man? is it a plane?
The flight crews of two planes flying at 3,000 feet reported seeing a man flying in a jetpack on separate occasions in Los Angeles in September and October. On 1 September, American Airlines issued a report of a “guy in a jetpack” at an altitude of 3,000 metres above LAX, and the following month the same bizarre event was spotted at around 6,000 some seven miles of LAX. The FBI was alerted but has yet to crack the case. However, a couple of months later the mysterious jetpack man was spotted on camera!
16. 5,000 dead pets were discovered in China
In October, a shocking discovery of 5,000 pet animals was made at a logistics centre in Luohe, in China’s Henan province. The pets included cats, dogs, guinea pigs and rabbits who’d been left without food and water for about a week, which was thought to be as a result of miscommunication in China’s mass-breeding supply chain. Around 200 of the animals were rescued alive.
17. A massive earthquake shook Greece and Turkey
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Turkish city Izmir and Greece on 30 October, killing at least 117 people and injuring around 1,000. The so-called Aegean Sea Earthquake was the latest in the seismically active Aegean Sea Plate region, which has complex plate tectonics and multiple plate boundaries, and was the deadliest quake of 2020.
18. A Zodiac cipher was cracked
The so-called Zodiac killer terrorised San Francisco in the late 1960s but was never charged nor identified. The only potential clues of who this killer was were a series of ciphers that no-one could decrypt. That was until December, when codebreakers decoded a 340-character message. The message, which was dismissed as “more nonsense,” read “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice (sic) all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me.” Two more Zodiac codes remain uncracked.
19. 20 people won a lottery with 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
The whole point of lotteries is that they’re supposed to be totally random. So when 20 people won South Africa’s National Lottery jackpot of $7.8 million with the numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, it’s understandable that the result was questioned. While some of the winners’ claims that they picked the numbers that week “out of instinct” only fuelled suspicion that the process “was a scam.” The result is under investigation by the county’s Lotteries Commission, which admitted the draw was “unprecedented.”
20. Gucci launched upside down glasses
Something a little lighter to finish off this list. In December, Gucci launched a new range of upside-down, fairly ugly looking floral glasses and slapped a £500+ price tag on them. Furthermore the brand described the new “fashion” range as: “An unconventional take on the ’50s and ’60s inspired cat-eye frames, these sunglasses are presented with an inverted design that created an ‘upside down’ effect.” Truly bizarre.
These stories show that there was plenty of doom and gloom to go around in what was a pretty crazy 2020. And there’s plenty more crazy stories that we’ve not even discussed here. Surely 2021 can only get better?
Originally published at http://roblathamwrites.com on January 12, 2021.
