It’s finally December. It’s a time of celebration, recollection, and resolutions. Once again, the year is winding down as everyone becomes excited about Christmas and the New Year ahead. 2015 is almost here, but the year 2014 held a variety of important events, both exciting and tragic.
The year began in a positive way for sports lovers. The Sochi Winter Olympics took place from Feb. 7-23 and featured all the classic winter events: skiing, bobsledding, snowboarding and, of course, figure skating. New events, including snowboard and ski slopestyle, luge team relay, and ski halfpipe also made an appearance.
“I was really interested in the new slopestyle events, because it was something different,” freshman journalism and mass communication major Sean Lynch said.
During the games, American alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, won a gold medal, to become the youngest ever Olympic champion, at 18 years old. All together, the U.S. picked up 28 medals, consisting of 12 bronze, seven silver and nine gold, which was good enough for fourth place.
A few weeks later, on Mar. 8, Malaysian airplane MH370 carrying 239 passengers disappeared from radar screens just an hour into the flight. The plane, which had been scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared without a trace.
“I think the news did a good job addressing the matter, but I don’t think we were informed about Malaysian airlines procedures on searching for the missing planes. The story quickly lost its appeal throughout media outlets,” freshman journalism and mass communication major Christina Root said.
More tragedy struck when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released videos of journalists James Foley and Steven Scotloff being beheaded by ISIL members. On Nov. 16, another video went viral of ISIL member “Jihadi John” standing over a human head. The White House later announced Peter Kassig, American aid worker and former soldier, was the person killed.
The spread of the Ebola virus, especially in Africa, became a huge discussion across the world. Even though only four people had the virus in the U.S, the topic flooded social media and news sites. Twitter featured trending topics such as “#ReplaceAMovieTitleWithEbola,” and an Ebola costume even emerged around Halloween.
The outbreak claimed dozens of lives throughout the nation, but as of Nov. 2, Congo is free of the virus. Unfortunately, other nations such as Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, are still Ebola-stricken.
Although many big events of the past year came laced with tragedy, positive events occurred as well. Thirty-two states now approve of same sex marriage, India is free of Polio, and the U.S. and China have agreed to cut their nations’ carbon emissions in an effort to promote climate change.
Much happened in 2014, and many of the big new stories may continue to make headlines in 2015.
