What a year!

The first important event took place in Australia where there were massive bushfires. According to some scientists, it all happened because of global warming. A record of 37 million acres burned and the fire destroyed almost 6000 buildings, not to mention all the animals and at least 34 people who died. In March, the fire was finally extinguished, but some economists believe that the bushfires cost over $100 billion which makes it the most expensive natural disaster in Australia.

In England something surprising happened. Fortunately, it was a lot less tragic, but anyway it became international news. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle quit the English royal family. At first glance the news was shocking, but the truth is that former Prince Harry never felt comfortable in the royal family. Actually, in 2017 he said that he didn’t enjoy being a prince and that nobody in the royal family wanted to be a king or a queen.

In early January, 2020 the tensions between USA and Iran escalated because of several events. USA reimposed sanctions on Iran because according to Americans, Iran’s nuclear program wasn’t going on according to the nuclear deal, which established that Iran wasn’t allowed to use nuclear energy for belic purposes. In the last days of 2019, Iran attacked an airbase where there was an American who died and then, after several events some American officials said that they had to protect the USA from an imminent attack. So, a US drone attacked and killed Qasem Soleimani who was the second most powerful person in Iran. Some days after that incident, Iran decided to attack a US base with a series of missiles, escalating tensions and worrying the international community because of the possibility of a nuclear war which could eventually destroy all the planet. Fortunately, the USA didn’t respond to the attack and no additional actions took place.

In the media, a Korean movie surprisingly won the Oscar for the best movie. It was the first and only time in 92 years that a non-English speaking movie won the most important Oscar. The film also won 3 more Oscars: the best director, the best original screenplay and the best international film. The movie is about 2 families who live in Seoul, one of them is very poor and lives in a basement and the other one is rich and lives in a large home.

2020 will be remembered as a tragic year, one that changed our lives and the way we lived. Many people died, some of them because they were infected by the new covid-19 and some others for different reasons. Among the victims there were some famous people. One of them was Quino, who was the cartoon maker who created world wide famous stories like Mafalda. In Latinamerica, there were several people who lost their lives too, some of them were Armando Manzanero, Manuel “El “Loco” Valdés, Oscar Chavez, and even some athletes stopped being part of this world, some examples are Maradona, Kobe Bryant and Paolo Rossi, who was an important Italian soccer player who won the World Championship in Spain, 1982. In the USA, things weren’t different as some actors passed away for one reason or another. Kirk Douglas who was once a very important Hollywood actor is an example. Sean Connery who played the role of James Bond and won several prizes was another 2020 victim and a more recent actor who also died in 2020 was Chadwick Boseman who was world wide known because of his paper as Black Panther in the Marvel Universe.