History

ICONS: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Covid-19, Afghanistan

• Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, and seven others die in a January 26, 2020, helecopter crash in Calabasas, CA. The National Transportation Safety Board suspects the helecopter's pilot may have become disoriented in fog resulting in the crash.
• South Korean movie Parasite becomes the first foreign language movie to win a "Best Picture" Oscar at the 92nd Academy Awards on February 9, 2020.
• On February 29, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported the first Covid-19 cases in the United States and the first death in the state of Washington. Between February 2020 and October 2021, more than 714,000 Americans died from the virus, surpassing the death toll from the 1918 Spanish Infuenza pandemic.
• Despite the challenges of Covid-19 and quarantines, the U.S. Census Bureau conducted the 2020 Census counting 331,449,281 people living in the United States as of April 1, 2020.
• Between July 24 and December 31, 2020, a series of wildfires in California, Oregon, and Washington devastated 10.2 million acres, caused nearly $20 billion in damage, and killed 47 people.
• Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies on September 18, 2020. She was the second woman (after Sandra Day O'Connor) and first Jewish woman to serve on the nation's highest court.
• Legendary rock musician and songwriter Eddie Van Halen dies on October 6, 2020 in Santa Monica, CA.
• In October 2020, the Washington State Department of Agriculture reported finding the first nest of Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia) or "murder hornets" in the United States near Blaine, WA.
• On November 3, 2020, Democratic candidate Joseph Biden defeated incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election. His running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, becomes the nation's first female, African American, and Asian Vice President of the United States.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration grants emergeny use authorization to the nation's first Covid-19 vaccine on December 10, 2020, and a nationwide vaccination begins 4 days later. Between December 2020 and October 2021, approximately 187 million people are vaccinated against Covid-19 in the United States.
• As Taliban fighters advance toward Kabul, Afghanistan, the United States evacuates more than 116,000 Americans, allies, and Afghan civillians from the country between August 14–30, 2021. After nearly 20 years in Afghanistan, the last American service members withdraw from Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30, 2021.
• On September 16, 2021, Space Exploration Technololgies Corporation—better known as "SpaceX"—launches the world's first all-civilian crewed mission into space from Cape Canaveral, FL, aboard its Crew Dragon spacecraft.