By Jazmine Halawa

When 2019 ended, the world thought it was a new beginning. It was the end of an era, one where everyone could leave the bad memories behind and make some new ones. What no one expected was that just one month into the new decade would be one of the craziest this generation had experienced. From the brink of WWIII to the outbreak of an unknown virus, 2020 has been one of the craziest years so far. 

Just a few days after New Years Day, on January 2nd, the United States killed a top Iranian general in an airstrike. In the few weeks before this event, the tension between Iran and the US was rising. For the longest time, the two countries had disagreements between oil revenue and nuclear progression. The USA was just one of many countries to put sanctions on Iran to try and limit its nuclear weapon progression. But in 2018 and 2019, Trump said that he wanted to bring back old sanctions and add new ones saying he could get a better deal from Iran. This made the tension boil and overall lead to the decision to take out an airstrike. This was just the start of all the events about to happen. 

As January moved along, a new event took place. An unknown disease, later named the Coronavirus, had a major outbreak starting in China. It soon spread to neighboring countries and then all around the world. As of now, it has infected 75,000 people and killed 2,000. It is a respiratory disease that starts off with cold and flu-like symptoms but then becomes more severe. It takes a few weeks for symptoms starting to show after a person has contracted the virus, which makes it even harder to contain. When the Coronavirus started to spread, even more, it was around Chinese Newyear, so many people were traveling and lead to the disease spreading even faster. In the midst of this horror, one of the saddest events of the year happened. 

On January 26th, 9 people died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. Of those 9, Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna were two of the passengers. This news came as a shock to the world since just the night before, he was on social media just congratulating Lebron James. He was also loved by Laker Fans, starting in the NBA when he was just a teenager and went on to play for 20 seasons. Many fans also watched his daughter Gianna grow up as she was always there supporting him at his games. She also was a very talented basketball player and dreamed to go and play professionally as well. The cause of the crash is thought to be the weather since it was a very foggy day. Today, people still can not believe this happened and continue to mourn. 

With this unthinkable start of 2020, people start to think that 2019 was not so bad. As the year continues to move forward, everyone is just trying to get through this rough start. To give everyone some hope for the rest of the year, spring break is just in 4 weeks and summer going to come in a blink of an eye. Let’s just hope these next few months are not as crazy as the beginning of this new year.