Another year goes bye

December 2017

Commission

The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry – aka the Banking Royal Commission – begins.

January 2018

“This is not a drill”

An incoming ballistic missile alert – issued over television, radio, and mobile phone – sent Hawaii into panic for about 30 minutes until emergency officials announced that the message had been sent in error.

February 2018 1/2

Chinese New Year
(of the Dog)

February 2018 2/2

Florida school shooting

A gunman opens fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing seventeen students and staff members and injuring seventeen others.

It is the deadliest shooting at a high school in United States history.

March 2018 1/4

Double agents

A former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, are found seriously ill on a bench in Salisbury, England.

British authorities allege they had been poisoned by a nerve agent, in an attack “almost certainly” approved by the Russian state.

March 2018 2/4

Caught out

The Australian men’s cricket team is involved in a ball-tampering scandal during and after the third Test match against South Africa in Cape Town when Cameron Bancroft was caught by television cameras trying to rough up one side of the ball with sandpaper to make it swing in flight.

March 2018 3/4

Stephen Hawking, 1942–2018

Renowned physicist, famed science communicator, and all-around inspiration dies at 76.

March 2018 4/4

The world’s last surviving male northern white rhino dies.

April 2018

Losing face

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appears before the Senate’s Commerce and Judiciary committees to discuss data privacy and Russian disinformation on his social network.

May 2018

“Foster care or whatever”

The Trump administration cruelly breaks apart migrant families, placing children in separate detention centres.

June 2018

As hosts, Russia kicks off the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

July 2018

Teamwork

All twelve boys and their coach from the Wild Boars football team emerge alive from a Thai cave that has been their prison for more than two weeks, in Chiang Rai Province.

August 2018

Aretha Franklin, 1942–2018

An icon for feminism and the civil rights movement, the greatest soul singer of her generation dies aged 76.

September 2018 1/2

Naomi Osaka

becomes the first Japanese tennis player to win a Grand Slam event.

September 2018 2/2

...as her opponent loses it.

October 2018

Italy floods

36 die as heavy rains cause severe flooding in several Italian cities, including Pisa, Florence and the capital Rome.

November 2018

Stan Lee, 1922–2018

Writer, editor, and Marvel Comics icon dies aged 95.