2020: Year in Review

South Korean K-pop group BTS has millions of fans around the world. But their popularity really went through the roof this year thanks to their hit “Dynamite.” With more than 100 million views in a single day, the video broke a YouTube record! “Dynamite” was also the biggest Spotify debut of 2020, beating a streaming record held by Taylor Swift.

It was a presidential election unlike any other in U.S. history! Election Day was November 3, but a record 100 million people voted before that. Many states expanded mail-in or early voting, and some offered early voting for the first time. The goal was to avoid having crowded polling places during the pandemic. It took a few days to count the votes, but by November 7, Joe Biden was projected to be the nation’s 46th president.

On October 11, LeBron James led the Los Angeles Lakers to the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship. The victory ended the NBA’s strangest season ever. Because of Covid-19, the league halted the season on March 11. The season restarted on July 30, after players and coaches moved to an isolation zone, or “bubble,” in Walt Disney World in Florida. The league was trying to keep everyone safe during the shortened season. The plan worked—there were no reported cases of coronavirus in the NBA bubble.

This year saw an epic hurricane season—the most active in recorded history. As Scholastic News went to press, 29 major storms had formed in the Atlantic Ocean. Twelve of them made landfall in the U.S.

There were so many storms that the World Meteorological Organization ran out of names. The group names the first 21 major storms of every year. That list ran out in September, with two months still left in hurricane season. So the agency used letters from the Greek alphabet, like Delta and Eta, to name the rest of the storms.