2020


2020 (MMXX) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2020th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 20th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 1st year of the 2020s decade.

2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.[1] Geospatial World also called 2020 "the worst year in terms of climate change" in part due to major climate disasters worldwide, including major bushfires in Australia and the western United States, as well as extreme tropical cyclone activity affecting large parts of North America.[2] A United Nations progress report published in December 2020 indicated that none of the international Sustainable Development Goals for 2020 were achieved.[3] Time magazine used its fifth ever Red X cover to declare 2020 "the worst year ever", although the cover article itself did not go as far, instead saying "There have been worse years in U.S. history, and certainly worse years in world history, but most of us alive today have seen nothing like this one."[4]

2020 was declared the "International Year of Plant Health" by the United Nations[5] and "Year of the Nurse and Midwife" by the World Health Organization.[6]

During the summer of 2020, the worst drought in almost a decade hits the Western, Midwestern and Northeastern United States.[389]


Mourners at the funeral of Qasem Soleimani who was killed by a U.S. drone strike
Flight 752 shot down by the Iranian IGRC
COVID-19 pandemic's first outbreak in Wuhan, China
Worldwide governments implement lockdowns and social distancing measures to battle the COVID-19 pandemic
Protests against the murder of George Floyd turned into widespread unrest in the US.
SpaceX launches the first crewed flight of the Crew Dragon, the first spaceflight launched from the United States since the final Space Shuttle mission
The 2020 Beirut explosion damaged a large part of the city
Nagorno-Karabakh War: Destruction in Ganja after an Armenian missile attack.
Tigray War: Mekelle is bombed by the Ethiopian federal government.
The Indian farmers' protest was one of the largest in the nation's history.
Qasem Soleimani
Qaboos bin Said
Terry Jones
Kobe Bryant
Mary Higgins Clark
Daniel arap Moi
Kirk Douglas
Katherine Johnson
Hosni Mubarak
Freeman Dyson
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Max von Sydow
Betty Williams
Kenny Rogers
Manolis Glezos
Honor Blackman
Mahmoud Jibril
Luis Sepúlveda
Florian Schneider
Irrfan Khan
Giacomo dalla Torre
Millie Small
Little Richard
Adolfo Nicolás
Oliver E. Williamson
Stanley Ho
Pierre Nkurunziza
Sushant Singh Rajput
Dame Vera Lynn
Sir Ian Holm
Carl Reiner
Ennio Morricone
Zizi Jeanmaire
Benjamin Mkapa
Peter Green
Dame Olivia de Havilland
Owen Arthur
Lee Teng-hui
John Hume
Frances Allen
Chadwick Boseman
Pranab Mukherjee
Diana Rigg
Moussa Traoré
John Turner
Arthur Ashkin
Juliette Gréco
Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah
Eddie Van Halen
Mario Molina
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri
Sir Sean Connery
Amadou Toumani Touré
Masatoshi Koshiba
Jerry Rawlings
Soumitra Chatterjee
Irinej
Diego Maradona
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Tabaré Vázquez
Kim Ki-duk
Pierre Buyoya
Pierre Cardin