In a couple of days, the year 2021 will be over. It seems incredible to me how fast time has passed and how the seasons and months have gone by so quickly. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to present serious problems, particularly with the new Omicron variant, and perhaps that is one of the reasons why this year and last year have passed so quickly: it has been a tug-of-war of hope and despair, associated with the desire we all have for this pandemic to end once and for all!

Anyway, since I haven't updated this blog much lately, I wanted to take this time to write a longer post and look back, through a few illustrations, at the events that marked this year. In my opinion, these were the most important events of this year:

James Webb Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) developed by NASA with contributions from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) was launched on the 25th of December. This telescope will support a broad array of research across the fields of astronomy and cosmology.

Facebook Files

Beginning in September 2021, The Wall Street Journal published "The Facebook Files: A Wall Street Journal Investigation", a series of news reports "based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management." A couple of weeks later, the whistleblower behind them came forward: Frances Haugen, a courageous former product manager on the Civic Integrity team, which was in charge of curbing misinformation and other threats to election security.

It's not news that social media has been used for years to spread misinformation. But having an "insider" to document and record the action (or inaction) coming from the senior management of the social giant was quite a moment.

Tokyo Summer Olympics

A year later than planned and with a lot of restrictions, the Summer Olympic Games finally took place in Tokyo this year. A number of athletes discussed the importance of participating in the games, but they also expressed their frustration at the lack of spectators and the confinement, which kept them from enjoying one of the most interesting cities in the world!

COVID-19 vaccine rollout

In January the COVID-19 vaccine rollout started, mainly in the industrialized countries (leaving the poorest nations behind). But then the scarcity of this valuable resource became clear, with many nations competing for the same vaccines.

There was a lot of criticism in particular of the EU, since the pace of the rollout was quite slow at the start.

Insurrection at the US Capitol

I remember I was working at home in January when those images of people attacking the US Congress appeared in my news feeds, so I switched to a live stream to check what was going on.

My first thought was "there can't be a coup d'état in the USA!"... but from everything that has been discovered so far, they weren't that far off. Democracy can be quite fragile.

PS: All the source pictures used in the illustrations come from Wikimedia Commons.