by Cameron Hill ’15
We’ve nearly made it through nine months of school. The year has gone by quickly, and its easy to forget that a world outside these green gates exist. Nevertheless, a lot has happened outside Williston this year. Here’s a special edition of Newflash, to look over these last few months again.
September 10
Public school teachers in Chicago, the third largest school system in the U.S., begin a strike. Approximately 350,000 schoolchildren are affected. Teachers protest against possible school closings and job losses, evaluations tied to performance, and cuts to their health care benefits. Students return to school on the 19th after a new contract is negotiated by city and union officials and the Teacher’s Union votes to end the strike.
September 11
On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya is attacked as a group of protesters demonstrates against an anti-Muslim film, “The Innocence of Muslims,” released on YouTube. The U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and a State Department computer expert, Sean Smith, that night, and a second attack the next morning kills security personnel Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. The attacks are immediately condemned by the Libyan government.
October 9
Fifteen year old Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani schoolgirl and the first recipient of Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize, is shot in the head and neck by Taliban gunmen as she returns home from school. Targeted for her criticism of life under Taliban rule on her BBC blog, Yousafzai is later sent to the United Kingdom for treatment.
October 28 – 31
Hurricane Sandy hits the U.S. becoming the second costliest U.S. Atlantic hurricane.
November 6
President Barak Obama is reelected and the United States territory of Puerto Rico votes to become a U.S. state.
November 9
David Petraeus resigns as Director of the CIA following the exposure of an extramarital affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.
December 14
Eleven days before Christmas, twenty-year old Adam Lanza fatally shoots his mother, six adult staff members, and twenty first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The incident sparks a national debate about gun control.
December 19
Conservative Park Geun-hye is elected the first female president of South Korea.
December 21
President Obama nominates Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. He will take over from Clinton on February 1.
February 1
A suicide bomb detonates outside the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey, killing the bomber and a security guard. The radical group Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front will claim responsibility for the attack the following day.
February 4
The University of Leicester in the U.K. announces that in an archaeological dig in 2012 it discovered the skeleton of England’s King Richard III in Leicester. The last Plantagenet king and the last monarch from the House of York, Shakespeare’s Richard III was based upon him.
February 11
Pope Benedict XVI makes history by announcing his intention to resign on the 28th. Citing his declining health, Benedict is the first pope to do so voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294.
February 12
North Korea states that it has been successful in testing a nuclear device which has the capacity to be formed into a weapon. On the same day, Christopher Dorner, who began a series of shootings on February 3 targeting police officers and their families, dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a manhunt which lasted more than a week.
February 14
Oscar Pistorius, the “Blade Runner” and first double leg amputee to compete in the Olympics, is charged with the murder of his girlfriend, South African model Reeva Steenkamp, after Steenkamp was fatally shot at his home.
March 3
A two year-old toddler from Mississippi, born with HIV/AIDS, is found to be HIV negative following aggressive treatment.
March 5
The Socialist president, Hugo Chávez, of Venezuela dies in office at the age of 58.
March 13
Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected pope on the second day of the Papal Conclave. He takes the name Francis I. Pope Francis is the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit to hold the title of Bishop of Rome.
April 4
After an escalation in North Korean threats of nuclear action against the United States, the government sends a missile defense system to the territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean.
April 8
The only female Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher, dies of a stroke at the age of 87. Known as the “Iron Lady,” Thatcher was the leader of Great Britain’s Conservative Party from 1975-1990. As Prime Minister, she opposed trade unions and advocated for the privatization of state-owned companies.
April 15
Two brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, set two pressure-cooker bombs off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people are killed by the explosion and more than 200 are wounded. Following the release of pictures identifying the subjects on the 18th, the brothers shoot a MIT police officer. Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed during a shoot-out with the police shortly after midnight on the 19th. That day, the city of Boston and the surrounding area are in lockdown as a manhunt is undertaken to locate the surviving brother, Dzhokhar. He is found on the evening of Friday, the 19th, ending a tragic week in Boston.
April 16
A bipartisan panel of U.S. senators announces a plan to reform the immigration system which may make it possible for millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens.
April 20
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake is recorded in Sichuan province, China. Nearly 200 are confirmed dead, over 20 are missing, and thousands of people are injured. Five years earlier a magnitude 8.0 earthquake caused even more damage in the same province.
April 30
The Netherlands has its first male monarch since 1890 when Willem-Alexander, The Prince of Orange, becomes King after the abdication of his mother, Queen Beatrix.
May 6
Three kidnapped women escape from a Cleveland home where they had been held for a decade.
May 7
Delaware becomes the 11th state to legalize gay marriage.
