Following years of uncertainty amid a deadly pandemic, 2022 was the start of a return to normalcy. A lot happened this year, and we are very excited to offer you the opportunity to relive it through this article.

January

To start off the New Year, wildfires ravaged Boulder County, Colorado, destroying nearly 1000 homes, injuring 6, and killing 2 people.

On January 9th, American television star and comedian Bob Saget died at the age of 65. Saget starred in the American sitcom, Full House for nearly a decade.

On January 11th, Teddy Balkind, a high school hockey player from Connecticut was killed during a game after a skating accident. His death drew reactions from many prolific figures around the world including the professional hockey legends and the NHL.

On January 17th, Russia deployed forces in allied Belarus as they begin training drills for a planned invasion of Ukraine. Putin denied allegations that he was planning an invasion, but the Western world remained skeptical.

February

On the night of February 13th, the Los Angeles Rams beat the underdog Cincinnati Bengals in Superbowl LVI. Quarterback Matthew Stafford was named the most valuable player of the game in his first season in Los Angeles.

This month saw the start of the winter Olympics taking place in Beijing. Norway came out of the games with the most gold medals at 16 and the most total medals at 37.

On February 17th, American WNBA start Brittney Griner was arrested by Russian officials for possession of Cannabis products. Her arrest furthered tensions between the United States and Russia.

In the latter half of the month, global peace was pushed to the brink when Russian president Putin finally ordered a mass invasion of Eastern Ukraine on February 24th. While invasion had been imminent for months, Putin’s action sparked the beginning of a war between the former Soviet nations which still rages at the end of 2022.

March

March of 2022 was marked by painfully high gas prices. A combination of high inflation and oil supply chain issues (stemming from the conflict in Ukraine) resulted in a record high mean price of gasoline.

In politics, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, more commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” The bill prohibited the teaching of some topics in Elementary classrooms. It targeted primarily LGBTQ issues, sparking large national protests. The bill went into effect on July 1st.

April

On April 11th, Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX successfully carried a group of tourists to the International Space Station, representing one of the first instances of commercial space flight with paying passengers.

May

On May 2nd, Politico released a leaked version of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on an unreleased Supreme Court decision. The case was Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and the leaked draft decision revealed that the Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v Wade, a landmark case from 1972 which had been considered legal precedent for 50 years.

On May 14th, a gunman opened fire in a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York. The shooting killed 10 shoppers and injured an additional 3. The shooter live streamed part of the massacre on his personal Twitch (an online streaming service) page, before the stream was shut down. The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, labeled himself as a white supremacist and ethno-nationalist in a manifesto written before the attack. All of his 10 victims were African American.

On May 24th at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at Robb, fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers, wounding seventeen others. Described by some as the next Sandy Hook, the Uvalde shooting is considered the one of the greatest tragedies of 2022. As with any school shooting, there was outrage in the community over gun laws in the state and the nation. What made this shooting unique was the actions of the Uvalde police department in the moments following the onset of violence. A Texas House committee that investigated the shooting found that after officers were originally pushed back by gunfire. But after that, they waited over an hour to reengage the gunman, costing several lives. The most painful part of this is the 911 call from a 10-year-old girl trapped in a classroom, where she begs for the police to help.

June

Even though the spike of gas prices began in March, the all-time high mean price of $5.08 per gallon was a June story. During the season of road trips, these high prices deeply affected many Americans.

In June of 2022, an armed man was arrested in front of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home. The man, 26-year-old Nicholas John Roske told police he was upset over the likelihood of the Supreme Court soon overturning the constitutional right to abortion, as well as the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas.

On the global scale, Russia continued it’s struggle to invade the Donbas region of Ukraine. In what had been anticipated as an easy victory for Russia, the Ukrainian armed forces and simple civilians held their own for months, pushing Russians out of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Also in June, the Israeli government dissolved as a result of too much gridlock in Parlaiment. In countries like the United States, where national security is not an immediate/daily threat, gridlock is relatively unimportant. But for countries like Israel, where national security is the top priority, gridlock is deadly. After former Prime Minister Netanyahu was ousted from office, his loyal supporters in Parlaiment staunchly voted against the opposition. Under this immense stress, Prime Minister Bennett made the choice to dissolve the government and rework it from the ground up.

On June 24th, the Supreme Court of the United States released the previously leaked decision on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The decision overturned the decision in the 1972 decision on Roe v Wade, which was 50 years of legal precedent. Most conservatives considered this a big victory, and most liberals considered it a loss of rights. Several states had abortion bans immediately go into effect after the decision. These bans are referred to as trigger bans.

On June 30th, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She is the first Black woman to hold that position, marking an important milestone in the history of the Court. She was appointed after Justice Steven Breyer announced his retirement.

July

Protests against the overturning of Roe v Wade sweep across the nation as many takes to the streets to voice their opinions on the matter.

On July 30th, President Biden tested positive for COVID-19 for a second time.

On July 31st, NBA Legend and former Boston Celtic, Bill Russell, died at the age of 88.

August

On August 2nd, the results from the first election with abortion bans on the ballot were in. Kansas, a typically red state, voted overwhelmingly against abortion bans, a significant victory in the Pro-Choice movement. In November, the people of Michigan voted to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Many people expect more of these actions to occur in other states in the future.

On August 3rd, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, became the most senior American official to visit Taiwan in 25 years. Pelosi visited despite several threats from the Chinese government. The United States has a “One China Policy” that prevents them from recognizing both Taiwan and China as nations. The US has always recognized China to avoid conflict, and Pelosi’s visit was originally interpreted as a change in recognition from the United States (which it was not).

On August 22nd, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced that he would resign his post as the Chief Medical Advisor to the President in December. As the nation’s leading expert on infectious disease, Fauci was a beacon of knowledge throughout almost the entirety of 2020 and 2021. He was Time Magazine’s Guardian of the Year in 2020.

On August 30th, Mikhail Gorbachev, the final premier of the Soviet Union passed away at the age of 91. His reign ended with the Soviet Union, and he oversaw the creation of the Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

September

On September 7th, Barack Obama and his family returned to the White House for the first time since 2017 to witness the unveiling of his presidential portrait. It is an age-old tradition for a president to invite his predecessor back to the White House for this event. But that begs the question as to why Barack Obama wasn’t invited back during the Trump administration. Most believe that it was a political statement from Trump not to invite Obama back. Biden was Vice President under Obama and decided to keep the tradition alive (except he hasn’t invited Trump back yet). The reunion was a heartwarming story in a time of mostly hard news.

On September 8th, the world was shocked to hear the news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. One of the most prolific figures in the history of the Royal Family, she held the throne for over 70 years, the longest of any British Monarch.

On September 24th, an Arizona judge ruled that a 1901 ban on nearly all abortions in that state can be enforced. The ruling was expected to bring out a lot of women voters in the upcoming midterm elections (spoiler alert).

October

On October 20th, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss, resigned as a result of an economic plan deemed idiotic by her colleagues. She was the shortest-lived Prime Minister in the country’s history. Rushi Sunak was appointed her successor by the Conservative Party.

On October 29th, Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in his home at night. A neighbor called police after they heard a commotion in the Pelosi household. Police arrived on scene to find Pelosi and a man wrestling over a hammer. After shouting for both men to drop it, they watched as the assailant beat Paul Pelosi with it before surrendering. In custody, he told police that he broke in looking for Nancy Pelosi, not her husband. Pelosi recovered in the hospital.

On Halloween in Soeul, South Korea, over 149 people were killed in a stampede. There was a large group present at a celebration that hadn’t been held since 2019 as a result of Covid-19. The event called into question the planning that went into the event, which was put under investigation.

November

On November 5th, despite a valiant effort from the Philadelphia Phillies, the heavily favored Houston Astros took home the 2022 Major League Baseball World Series in 6 games. This was the organization’s second title in franchise history and the first since 2017.

On November 6th, the 2022 midterm elections occurred, resulting in a change of control in the House of Representatives, but not in the Senate. Most polls suggested a “red wave” of Republican victories across the country. To everyone’s surprise, the Democrats gained a Senate seat and minimized the loss of their seats in the house. Despite this, Democrat Robert Zimmerman lost his NY-3 election to George Santos* .

December

After nearly 10 months in a Russian prison, the United States and Russia orchestrate a prisoner swap, freeing Brittney Griner, in exchange for Viktor Bout, the so called “Merchant of Death”.

TIME Magazine names Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the person of the year along with the “Spirit of Ukraine.”

After Robert Zimmerman lost his NY-3 election to rookie George Santos*, people started to question the congressman-elect’s past. In his campaign, he claimed the following: he is Jewish, his grandmother died in the Holocaust, his mother died on 9/11, he graduated from CUNY Baruch College, he worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, he owned 13 retail properties, and several other things. In December, in an interview with the New York Post, Santos admitted that some of that was false. The rest was deemed untrue by several investigations from the media and from federal prosecutors. Santos fully intends to keep his seat in Congress despite the allegations against him.

On Sunday December 18th, Argentina beat France on penalty kicks, winning the 2022 World Cup Final. This win was the first in the career of Argentinian star Lionel Messi, one of the greats in the history of the sport.

On December 29th, the king of futból (or soccer), Péle died in Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital, São Paolo, Brazil. He was considered one of the greatest athletes of all time and made his mark by leading the Brazilian National Team to three World Cup victories.

On December 31st, Pope Benedict XVI died. He worked to bring Christianity back to a secularized Europe but will be remembered as the first Pope to step down in over 600 years.

*George Santos is under criminal investigation for misuse of campaign funds and has also been accused of lying about his background while running for office in New York’s 3rd congressional district.