By Haley Vaughan ’18, Contributor
2016 has been a bit like when someone time travels, accidentally changes one tiny thing, and then comes back and everything is Not Quite Right. Mass shootings, suicide bombings, natural disasters, and an intense, deeply personal, nasty presidential election have filled the news. But even then, the year wasn’t all bad.
Good Things That Happened in 2016:
-Taiwan elected its first female president Tsai Ing-wen who won with 56.1% of the vote
-Kathryn Smith was hired by the Buffalo Bills as the NFL’s first female fulltime coach
-Leonardo DiCaprio finally won his first Oscar for Best Actor
-The Cleveland Clinic performed the first uterus transplant
-TESCO, the U.K supermarket giant, announced they would donate all unsold food to charity
-According to The World Wild Life Fund, the wild tiger population jumped from 3,200 in 2010 to 3,890 in 2016
-Child mortality is down everywhere and continues to drop
-The gene that is responsible for ALS has been found, which means we are closer to an effective treatment
-Volunteers in India planted almost 50 million trees in one day
-After a five-year journey over 1.7 billion miles, NASA’s Juno spacecraft entered Jupiter’s orbit
-Pokémon Go players placed lures near hospitals for sick kids who couldn’t get out and hunt Pokémon
-California now powers over 6 million homes with solar power
-Some awesome movies were released: Deadpool, Finding Dory, Spotlight, Zootopia, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find The, Moana, Doctor Strange, and Star Trek Beyond just to name a few
-A bunch of other awesome movies are going to be released: Hidden Figures, Fences, Passengers, Office Christmas Party, and Rogue One
-The musical Hamilton won 11 Tony Awards
-The USA took home 121 medals at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, a new record
-Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all-time, brought his total number of medals to 28
-Katie Ledecky smashed the World Record for the 800 meter freestyle with a time of 8 minutes and 4.79 seconds, 11.38 seconds ahead of second place
-The Chicago Cubs won the World Series, their first win since 1908
-Hillary Clinton became the first woman to win a major political party nomination
-The creepy clown craze seems to have disappeared
-Awesome artists like Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé released new albums
-BBC’s Sherlock announced that its 4th season would premier January 1st, 2017
-Singer Tony Bennett turned 90
-The ozone layer is showing signs of recovery
Bad Things That Happened in 2016:
-Some things are better left unsaid…
