2021 Recap: 10 Significant Events That Reshaped The Planet

The year 2021 was truly one heck of a rollercoaster ride. As chaotic as it might have seemed, it's also a year where progress and technological advancements happened. Here are 10 of the biggest events that transpired in 2021.

1. U.S. Capitol Siege

On Jan. 6, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by supporters of the former U.S. President Donald Trump following his defeat to Joe Biden in the U.S. Presidential elections 2020.

A joint session of the Congress was being held inside the Capitol at the time of the attack. The mob looted offices, assaulted security officials, and vandalized the Capitol.

Five people, including Officer Brian Sicknick, were killed in the attack. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) called the Capitol siege an act of “domestic terrorism.”

Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for extorting the rioters. Although he was acquitted by the Senate, Trump became the first U.S. President to be impeached twice.

2. National Geographic Society Recognizes Planet Earth’s Fifth Ocean

On World Oceans Day (June 8), National Geographic cartographers officially recognized the swift current encircling Antarctica as the Southern Ocean. They say the currents keep the waters there distinct and thus worthy of their own name.

“Anyone who has been there will struggle to explain what's so mesmerizing about it, but they'll all agree that the glaciers are bluer, the air colder, the mountains more intimidating, and the landscapes more captivating than anywhere else you can go,” says Seth Sykora-Bodie, a marine scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a National Geographic Explorer.

The organization has drawn up a new map that acknowledges the discovery. So now the planet has five oceans; the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern oceans.

3. Astronomers See Light Bending Behind A Black Hole

Not even light can escape the Black hole’s gravitational pull. But for the first time, astronomers observed light “echo” bending behind a black hole.

Researchers, led by Dan Wilkins, an astrophysicist at Stanford University in California, used the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and NASA's NuSTAR space telescopes to observe the light from behind a black hole that's 10 million times bigger than our sun and lies at around 800 million light-years away in the spiral galaxy. The finding has once again confirmed Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

4. Space Tourism Becomes A Reality

Space tourism finally launched in 2021. In the span of 10 short days in July, both Virgin Galactic, the spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group, and Blue Origin, the spaceflight company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, scripted history by making successful first flights into suborbital space with paying customers aboard.

On July 11, Sir Richard Branson became the first commercial customer to fly to space with his company, Virgin Galactic. Branson was joined on board by three VG employees: Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses, VG Lead Operations Engineer Colin Bennett, and VP of Government Affairs and researcher Sirisha Bandla (who conducted experiments in flight).

Nine days later on July 20, Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle completed their first successful consumer flight with founder Jeff Bezos on board.

The vehicle took off from the Launch Site One near the town of Van Horn in Texas with four passengers aboard: Bezos, his brother Mark, 82-year-old aerospace legend Wally Funk, and an 18-year old student named Oliver Daemen, whose father was one of the bidders in Blue Origin’s auction for the last seat and thus making him the first paying customer on a suborbital flight.

5. El Salvador Adopts Bitcoin As A National Currency

In September 2021, El Salvador officially adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, alongside the U.S. dollar. Every citizen has been gifted $30 in bitcoin and can now use it to shop or pay their taxes.

The draft legislation raised concerns among many Salvadorans who are dubious of Bitcoin’s inherent volatility. While many Salvadorans were posting their successful bitcoin purchase on social media others were marching in the street in protest.

Financial experts speculate that cryptocurrency could encourage money laundering and bring further economic instability to El Salvador.

6. Ever Given Gets Stuck In Suez Canal

On March 23, a 400-meter-long cargo ship named Ever Given got wedged sideways in the narrow Suez Canal. The ship was stuck for six days leading to a “traffic jam” of over 400 ships at either end of the canal which is part of the Silk Road that connects Europe with Asia.

The event had a domino effect on international trade as the blockage was holding up goods worth 9.6 billion dollars a day, that is 400 million dollars an hour.

Ever Given was not exactly at fault. The poor giant ran aground to a sandbank after getting caught in a sandstorm just when it was crossing the Canal.

It took nearly a week and a lot of effort to free the 200,000-ton cargo ship. But the ship was allowed to leave the territory only after three months. The Egyptian authorities had impounded the ship demanding compensation from its owners and insurers.

Ever Given is currently en route to Germany’s Hamburg.

7. Elon Musk’s SpaceX Creates History

Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched SN15, a high-altitude Starship prototype rocket, and successfully landed it for the first time on May 5.

The Starship prototype took off from the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, facility to an altitude of about 9.6 km and then as planned started its descent to Earth. Just before touchdown two of the engines restarted and SN15 made a successful landing near its launchpad.

The success is a crucial achievement for SpaceX’s Mars plans in which it plans to send earthlings to the Red Planet as well as the moon.

SpaceX created history once again in Sept. 2021 with the launch of Inspiration4 — the world’s first spaceflight with an all-civilian crew.

The Crew Dragon capsule, carrying the four-member crew, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sept. 16.

After orbiting the Earth for three days the capsule splashed safely in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.

The passengers were geoscientist Sian Proctor, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, aerospace data engineer Chris Sembroski, and physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux. None of them were professional astronauts.

8. As The COVID-19 Virus Mutates

The Delta variant was first identified in Dec. 2020 in India. This variant soon became the dominant strain around the world as it was more infectious than its predecessors. Until Nov. 2021, when South African scientists identified the emergence of the Omicron variant. The variant is rapidly spreading and had already been found in multiple countries around the world.

It is still unclear whether Omicron poses a greater health threat or would set the world into another tailspin. What was clear is that more than 5 million people globally and 800,000 Americans had died from COVID-19.

9. The Taliban Return To Power

Twenty years after their ouster by U.S. troops, The Taliban returned to power in 2021.

President Joe Biden had ordered the U.S. will make its complete withdrawal from Afghanistan by no later than September 11, 2021—the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. As U.S. troops proceeded with the withdrawal, the Taliban forces overran the country and Kabul fell on Aug. 15.

The Taliban’s harsh reign has been sparking concerns as they do not have a functioning government. There exists a massive humanitarian crisis as the group fails to provide security, health services, and economic opportunities to its citizens.

Biden called the withdrawal an “extraordinary success”. However, more than one hundred U.S. citizens and as many as 300,000 Afghans who may have qualified for expedited U.S. visas were reportedly left behind in the land

10. A Human Brain Wirelessly Connects To A Computer

Scientists at Brown University in Rhode Island were able to establish a connection between a human brain and a computer via a transmitter device making a possible breakthrough for those with spinal cord injuries.

Trial participants with paralysis used the BrainGate system with a wireless transmitter and were able to move robotic limbs by simply imagining their movements.

The wireless unit is just placed on the user's head and it 'connects to an electrode array within the brain’s motor cortex', according to a press release.

The breakthrough came just a few months after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that his brain chip start-up Neuralink has successfully wired up a monkey's brain that lets it play video games.