2018 was a year of extremes, with both historic loss and historic advancement. We saw record-breaking natural disasters, such as the Camp Wildfire in California, which displaced thousands of people and killed 88 people while generating $16.5 billion in damages and displacing thousands more. Meanwhile, Hurricane Florence pounded the East Coast with a record-breaking 34 inches of rain in North Carolina. The tsunami that struck Indonesia’s Sunda Strait on December 22nd killed 430 people and injured approximately 1,500 more, bringing the year to a close.
Several influential figures, including former US President George H.W. Bush, war veteran-turned-senator John McCain, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and entertainment icons such as Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul,” and Stan Lee, the grandfather of Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee, passed away in 2018. However, considerable progress was made this year, with unemployment rates in the United States falling to their lowest level since 1969, the Marine Corps appointing its first female infantry platoon leader, and Saudi Arabia abolishing its prohibition on women driving. With Prince Harry’s marriage to actress Meghan Markle on May 19th, the United Kingdom witnessed its first royal wedding to a commoner.
On April 27th, a historic meeting between North and South Korea marked the formal end of the Korean War, as the two countries united to welcome the rest of the world to Pyeongchang for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Back in the United States, the Trump administration’s second year was marred by scandal, with new suspicions of Russian meddling in the 2016 election casting a pall over the 45th President of the United States.
Following its April 27th release, Disney subsidiary Marvel Entertainment once again dominated the entertainment business, with the release of “Avengers: Infinity War” setting a new record for the highest-grossing domestic opening weekend of all time. This third edition in the “Avengers” franchise was the fourth highest earning film of 2018, closely followed by “Black Panther,” which was released just a few months earlier on February 16th, at number nine. The two films grossed a total of $3.3 billion at the box office. Despite some hopeful developments, the year ended with Americans concerned about climate change, with 78 percent believing it to be the cause of rising extreme weather, according to a November poll.
Continue reading to discover more about the events of 2018.
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(September 28, 2018) |
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