What Happened In 2016? Major Events, Headlines And Deaths From The Past Year

In many ways, 2016 was a year of extremes. The world saw a massive wave of political change brought on by right-wing populists in both Europe and the United States, a dizzying number of beloved celebrities took their last breaths and the world was impressed by rare feats in the sport world. Here’s a look back at the major headlines and events.

January:

-Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the world’s most notorious drug kingpins, was recaptured Jan. 8 after escaping from a maximum security prison in Mexico.

-Music icon David Bowie died after an 18-month battle with cancer Jan. 10. He was 69.

-Famed British actor Alan Rickman died Jan. 14 from cancer. He was 69.

-The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Jan. 16 that Iran had adequately dismantled its nuclear weapons program following a deal brokered between the country and the United States. That ruling allowed the United Nations to lift sanctions on Iran.

-The World Health Organization announced Jan. 28 that the Zika virus was “spreading explosively” in the Americas.

February:

-North Korea, defying warnings from the United Nations and the West, launched a long-range rocket with a satellite into space Feb. 7.

-“To Kill A Mockingbird” author Harper Lee died in her sleep Feb. 19 at the age of 89.

March:

-President Barack Obama and his family visit Havana, Cuba, March 20. The visit was the first by a U.S. president in 88 years.

- Terrorists kill 35 people in three coordinated suicide bombings March 22 in the Brussels subway and airport. The attack followed attacks in Paris in 2015 and further laid bare security concerns in Europe.

-A suicide bomb in the Pakistan city of Lahore killed at least 75 people and injured hundreds more March 27.

April:

-The worst breach in ceasefire between the Armenian and Azerbaijani militaries since 1994 killed at least 193 people April 2.

-The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, coordinating work between newsrooms across the globe, published some 11.5 million confidential documents from Mossack Fonseca April 3, a Panamanian firm used to hide money overseas. The leaks, later known as the Panama Papers, had a range of implications and implicated well-known personalities, heads of state and more than 214,000 offshore companies.

-The musician Prince was found dead at his home April 21. He was 57.

May:

-The Leicester City football club won the Premier League May 2 in the United Kingdom after a dazzling season that defied all predictions.

-EgyptAir Flight 804 crashes May 19 on a trip from Paris to Cairo. Sixty-six people on board the plane died.

June:

-The world’s longest rail tunnel in Switzerland was unveiled on June 1. The project took two decades to complete.

-Boxing icon Muhammad Ali died at the age of 74 June 3.

- The United Kingdom shocked the world when it voted June 23 to leave the European Union. Leading up to the vote polls and forecasts indicated that a Brexit rejection was almost a lock. It wasn’t.

July:
-NASA’s Juno spacecraft began orbiting Jupiter July 4. The craft would later send some of the first close-up images of the planet back to Earth.

-A terrorist drove a truck through a crowded promenade in Nice, France, killing 87 people including the driver July 14, the country’s independence day.

- The first solar powered plane, the Solar Impulse 2, successfully completed a trip around the world July 26.

-Democrat Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be nominated to be president by a major U.S. presidential party July 26.

August:

-The summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, opened from Aug. 5 through 21.

-Reports of creepy clowns trying to lure children into the woods in South Carolina surfaced Aug. 29. The phenomenon would later go national, with hundreds of sightings reported in the United States.

-The Brazilian Senate voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, the country’s first female president, Aug. 31.

September:

-In a major setback for the company, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded in Florida with a Facebook satellite on board Sept. 1. The explosion led to months of investigations and grounded the SpaceX fleet from launching for the rest of the year.

-The United States and China, two of the world’s biggest polluters, ratified the Paris Climate Agreement Sept. 2. The support came ahead of the year’s G-20 summit and gave the deal important backing to deal with the effects of climate change.

-NASA launched its first asteroid mission Sept. 8 to collect samples of the rocks in space.

-North Korea conducted what was reportedly its fifth and largest nuclear test Sept. 9.

October:

-A video of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women in 2006 surfaced Oct. 8 leading to a decline in his polling numbers.

-FBI Director James Comey notified Congress that his agency has found new emails related to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Oct. 28. Her polls droppoed after the emails were revealed. The FBI found them during a probe of Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of one of Clinton’s top aide’s, Huma Abedin. Weiner was being investigated for sending explicit messages to an underage girl.

November:

-The Chicago Cubs, for the first time in 108 years and after a seemingly-prohibitive deficit, came back to beat the Cleveland Indians in Game 7 of the World Series Nov. 2.

-Singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen died Nov. 7 at the age of 82.

-Republican Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election Nov. 8 in a surprise upset against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump had been all but written off by the news media and polling ahead of the election after a rough month in which a video surfaced of him bragging about sexual assault surfaced and questions swirled about his family charity.

December:

-American hero John Glenn, who became the first U.S. citizen to orbit Earth, died Dec. 8 at the age of 95.

-Andrei Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, was assassinated Dec.19. On that same day, a truck drove into a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany, killing at least a dozen and leaving many more injured.

-“Star Wars” actress Carrie Fisher died at the age of 60 Dec. 27.