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What Happened In 2020: Lions And Tigers And Bears, Oh, My!

Writing about what happened in 2020 feels almost moot. This was definitely a year when everyone knows all too well what happened. We each had a place on the world stage and whether we knew our lines or not, we played our parts and are still playing our parts.

That was a pretty good beginning. I’m rather impressed with it.

The United Nations declared 2020 The Year of Plant Health. The rest of us tremble for our wellbeing, but hey, as long as that nasty nasturtium blooms and the zany zucchini is rocking, the heck with us.

As usual in my year end posts, I ignore the bad stuff and glom onto the potential comedy. It wasn’t that easy to find, but I managed to unearth a few nuggets.

January:

January 08: (Wikipedia tells me that January 08 is the eighth day of the year. Thank you, Wikipedia.)

  • The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announce they are not going to be royal pains any longer. They want to become financially independent, and to further that end, they move to Montecito, California. Or to their little cottage, Frogmore. I’m not sure which; they may be splitting their time between the two locations, which makes perfect sense: traveling between two houses often leads to financial independence. I think this duke and dukess couple is Meghan and Harry, lately of the UK. When last seen in Montecito, Harry was delivering papers and mowing lawns, looking adorable in freckles and a baseball cap, and Meghan was serving cocktails at a nearby bar, wearing a leotard with a fluffy white tail.

January 09: (According to the experts at Wikipedia, January 09 is the ninth day of the year. What would we do without Wikipedia?)

  • A rare, circumbinary planet called TOL 1338-b is discovered. As a name, that one really sucks. A circumbinary planet is a planet that revolves around two stars–which is fine and describes a Hollywood agent–but we’re wondering about the lack of imagination displayed by astrologers when it comes to planet monikers. Jehoshaphat would be a good name for a planet, because any planet named Jehoshaphat would not be confused with another planet, whereas TOL 1338-b could easily be confused with TOL 1338-a.

January 11:

  • Diego, a giant 100 year-old tortoise, retires and sets sail for the Galapagos islands. His turbo charged libido is credited with saving his species, although he can’t remember the names of his 800 children and is too old to play catch with them. Hundreds of lady tortoises, all of them driving station wagons full of yelling, raucous little tortoises, show up at the docks and wave him goodbye with tears in their eyes. One nerdy looking tortoise, name of Ferdie, demands equal press and a nice retirement condo, too, citing numerous instances of having visited many of the ladies gathered on the dock while Diego was out of town on business trips “saving his species” at various airport Radissons.
“Hey, Baby! Remember me? How are our 20 kids? I saved our species, singlehandedly so to speak, wink, wink. You’re welcome!”

January 16:

  • The impeachment trial of Donald Trump begins. He was acquitted on February 5. No one knows for sure why he was on trial, or why he was acquitted, but he claims it was the best impeachment trial ever.

January 21:

  • The world’s oldest asteroid impact, at 2.2 billion years old, was found in Yarrabubba, Western Australia, and may have ended an ice age, as reported in Nature Communications. Shortly after it landed, air conditioning and cherry slushies were invented, as people cursed the end of the Ice Age and the convenience of cold drinks in the summer.

January 23:

  • The voice of a 3,000 year old Egyptian priest was recreated by scientists, who 3D printed his vocal tract, as published in Scientific Reports. The scientists listened carefully, but weren’t positive about what the priest said. It sounded like he sent out for a pizza and asked for a glass of water, citing a severe case of dehydration and sarcophagus throat. The pizza arrived 30 minutes after the 3,000 year-old priest ordered it, and was delivered by Harry, the Duke of Sussex, driving a compact with a Domino’s sign on top.
what happened in 2020 on Chezgigi.com
Did you see the delivery guy? Wasn’t that Harry?

January 29:

  • Donald Trump signs the North American trade agreement that will replace NAFTA. A program with the initials USMC–and maybe A–replaces it. The Marines are always useful in a crisis.

January 30:

  • The WHO declares the outbreak of  Covid-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the sixth time this measure has been invoked since 2009. This worries me a lot, because I don’t remember any other pandemics in the last eleven years and it has been invoked SIX times.

January 31:

  • The United Kingdom and Gibraltar withdraw from the European Union, which leads to much speculation. I thought Gibraltar was just a big rock. This impression can be directly traced to popular songs, and the phrase, “the Rock of Gibraltar.” However, these songs never state that Gibraltar IS a rock, but rather, that it HAS a rock–leading educators to blame popular songs and Gibraltar as the direct cause of the failure of public schools.

February:

February 09:

  • The fastest supersonic New York to London flight was made by a British Airways Boeing 747-436 in four hours and 56 minutes, going 825 mph due to Storm Ciara, according to the cockpit, who sounded somewhat stressed in their radio transmissions. After investigation by the FAA, Storm Ciara is discovered to be another annoying royal, who demanded to get home in time to make it to her job in the shoe department at Harrod’s.
What happened in 2020 on Chezgigi.com
I’d like another cup of coffee and a bag of peanuts before we land, please.

February 11:

  • Snow falls in Baghdad, Iraq, for only the second time in a century. Snowballs everywhere protest, stating that they don’t stand a chance in hell, and there’s no reason for a Baghdad snowball to have an advantage over them.

February 13:

  • Scientists overturn current thought about how planets form – not by violent collision, but by gentle clumping, whatever that is–through the study of Arrokoth in the Kepler belt, as published in Science. Scientists from Marvel Comics Superhero Labs, Inc, protest, claiming that planets are created when superheros marry, have babies, and are subsequently sent off in a spaceship to crash land on a distant planet. Furthermore, Arrokoth in the Kepler Belt is a really cool name that sounds like something they made up while working on a Superman comic.

February 17:

  • Jeff Bezos pledges 10 million prime dollars to combat climate change. Unfortunately for the climate, he has to sell three million items made in China and deliver them in two days to customers, in order to meet this financial goal. Fortunately for Bezos, Harry offers to take the graveyard shift, while Meghan is working overtime at the bar.

February 18:

  • The Boy Scouts of America files for bankruptcy amid hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits, effectively suspending those claims. Harvey Weinstein and Matt Bauer both protest from jail, stating that they are bankrupt, too, and demand to be released.

February 24:

  • Malaysia’s 94-year old Prime Minister resigns, only to be reinstated later in the day as interim Prime Minister. The AARP steps in, stating that re-electing a 94 year-old man who wants to resign is elder abuse.
  • Scientists identify the first animal that doesn’t need oxygen to breathe – a tiny parasite living in salmon tissue, as reported in the journal PNAS, leading fish eaters to re-think their dinner choices and to stop holding their breath when they eat salmon as being pointless.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad

February 29:

  • Luxembourg becomes the first country in the world to make all public transportation free to use. Harry and Meghan demand to fly there at no charge, and take jobs delivering pizzas when they land. Pizzas are delivered by bus in Luxembourg, which means they arrive cold. Harry generally eats them before they can be delivered, anyway.

March:

March 04:

  • Italian Prime Minister Conte announces all sports in Italy will be played behind closed doors for at least a month in an effort to contain the coronavirus. Players break all the windows in the Sistine Chapel when they kick their soccer balls too high, and are required to replace them at their own cost. All the players go out looking for the original artist of the stained glass windows, but he remains mysteriously absent.

March 11:

  • The smallest dinosaur ever discovered –the skull is preserved in a piece of amber smaller than a fingertip–is from a mine in Myanmar, as reported in Nature. Harry and Meghan claim it as a crown possession and list it on eBay for 20 million dollars.

March 17:

  • The Golden Raspberry Film Awards (the Razzies), gives the musical Cats six awards, including worst film. Cats everywhere are so overwhelmed with the honor, that they all blink twice and stalk off to hide under beds for a week.
  • Chad begins repaying a $100 million debt to Angola with cattle, as more than 1,000 cows arrive in Luanda. Chaos erupts in cities as depositors line the cows up at ATM machines to be deposited. The cows get stuck, bank computers shut down, and balance sheets continue to show that Chad still owes Angola sheep, chicken, and ducks, none of which fit through the ATM slots.
“Dude, which account are you?”

April:

April 02:

  • A new study shows western Antarctica was once swampy with temperate forests, 93-83 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, according to the Alfred Wegener Institute. Meghan and Harry immediately decamp for Antarctica, determined to find disgruntled penguins to sell.

April 06:

  • Nadia, a tiger at the Bronx Zoo, tests positive for COVID-19. Nadia, claiming status as an “essential” worker at the zoo, continues to walk around her enclosure as she always has, but now she gets to collect unemployment.

April 23:

  • The first findings of a frog fossil, 40 million years old, is found on Seymour Island, Antarctica, as published in Scientific Reports. Harry and Meghan buy it for $20 and list it on eBay for 10 million dollars.

April 28:

  • The US Department of Defense releases three declassified videos of possible UFOs from 2004 and 2015. Unfortunately, the videos disappear minutes after they appear on YouTube. YouTube employees claim the videos disappeared in a whoosh of air and a blinding light, but no one believes their story.

May:

May 06:

  • An Irish organization repays a 170 year old favor, raising over $2 million for the Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation, which were badly affected by coronavirus. In the 1840s, the Choctaw Nation sent $170 to aid the Irish during the potato famine. The Native Americans congratulate themselves on a well played investment, citing casinos as another endeavor that makes them a tidy profit.

May 24:

  • Millions of cicadas in a once in 17 year event are about to emerge from the earth in the US south, posing crop danger and noise issues, according to scientists from Virginia Tech. Cicadas, not generally known for their sense of humor, or for their compassion, think it’s funny as hell that this day landed in 2020.

May 30:

  • SpaceX‘s Falcon 9 rocket launches, carrying the Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station. It is the first private company to launch astronauts into space. The first thing the astronauts do is go to Starbuck’s and have a latte, and then request that a McDonald’s be built on the moon.

June:

June 08:

  • Former astronaut Kathy Sullivan is the first woman to reach the deepest point of the ocean – Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench. She was formerly the first American woman to spacewalk. On both occasions, she wore great shoes.

June 10:

  • Cameroon’s conflict with English-speaking separatists is rated the world’s most-neglected conflict, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. Apparently, someone threw a war and no one showed up, causing the Norwegian Refugee Council to disconsolately disband and wonder why no one comes to their wars.
“Comrade, you dance divinely!”

June 25:

  • The American country music band, The Dixie Chicks, changes their name to “The Chicks” to remove connotations of Confederate history. The #MeToo movement catches wind of this and protests the use of the word “chicks” to describe women. The becomes the first band to tour with only an article for a name. Grammarians catch wind of it and demand that the The either pair the article with a noun or an adjective, or get off the stage.

July:

July 14:

  • A new study shows the Andean condor, the world’s heaviest bird, can fly for 5 hours without flapping its wings, according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Andean condor goes to multiple bars to exploit this skill and wins prize money and free drinks everywhere he goes. Electric vehicle makers protest, claiming they can go that long without recharging, but no one gives them a drink.

July 23:

  • China launches its first mission to Mars–Tianwen-1, a combined orbiter, lander and rover–from Wenchang Launch Site, Hainan Island. It meets up with the US mission, and then tells Mars authorities it can do whatever we can do, only cheaper.

August:

August 01:

  • Egypt tells Elon Musk the pyramids were not built by aliens, after Musk tweets his support of a conspiracy theory that aliens did build them. Then they tell him that Santa Claus isn’t real, after which Musk tells on them to his parents and drives the price of Tesla stock down. Meghan and Harry, who had listed the pyramids on eBay in an effort to add to their financial portfolio, return the pyramids to Egypt as being fake alien buildings, and take the Taj Mahal, instead.

August 13:

  • New details are published about the enormous “Terror Crocodile” (Deinosuchus), a croc the size of a bus, with teeth as big as bananas, which lived during late Cretaceous period (75-84 million years ago) in North America. During an autopsy on the Terror Croc–with such big eyes and big teeth–several red hoods and the Lost City of Atlantis are found in his stomach. Thousands of misplaced reading glasses and retainers dating back to the ’60s are recovered as well.

August 20:

  • Kamala Harris accepts her nomination for vice-president, becoming the first US woman of color on a major-party ticket, and is quoted as saying, “There is no vaccine for racism.” No one knows what this means, but the World Health Organization contacts Moderna and asks them to come up with one. Moderna complies, sending the stock soaring, after which the company promises to develop vaccines for misogyny and ageism.

August 28:

  • The Japanese tech company, SkyDrive, says it has completed the first manned test flight of a flying car. The Jetson family writes to SkyDrive asking that they correct this obvious error.

August 29:

  • Elon Musk unveils a pig named Gertrude, with a coin-sized computer in her brain, which is part of his Nuralink start-up to create a brain-to-machine interface. One week after her unveiling, Musk disappears, Gertrude takes control of Tesla in a hostile takeover, starts the #NoMoreBacon movement, and demands that piggy banks and BLTs be removed from cultural reference. The whereabouts of Musk remain unknown.

September:

September 06:

  • A strain of bacteria, nicknamed Conan the Bacterium, survives three years attached to the International Space Station. Aliens everywhere protest, stating that bacteria named after Barbarians are not welcome in space.

September 14:

  • Astronomers report possible signs of life on Venus, after detecting the chemical phosphine in the planet’s atmosphere. Conan the Bacterium, after eavesdropping outside a space station door, hops a spaceship to Venus in order to meet this chick Phosphine.

September 18:

  • Earliest dated evidence for the human species is found in the Arabian Peninsula when fossilized footprints 120,000 years old are uncovered in Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert. These footprints measure a whopping size 22, causing Nike to send executives to Saudi Arabia to sign up whoever made the footprints for a Nike ad campaign.

September 24:

  • David Attenborough breaks Jennifer Aniston’s record as the fastest to reach 1 million followers on Instagram. Immediately after this news is announced, they both go to a coffee shop and relax on a sofa to chat and not work for several years.

September 30:

  • California becomes the first US state to pass a law allowing for reparations for black residents and descendants of slaves. Women everywhere protest, insisting they deserve reparations, too, as having been denied equal opportunity and the vote for several years, plus having had to wash the bulk of the world’s dishes and dirty underwear. The California governor resigns, claiming stress from listening to his wife at home and his female staffers at work.

October:

October 12:

  • The Nobel Prize for Economics is awarded to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson for their contributions to auction theory. EBay executives protest, claiming they should get the prize. Migrom and Wilson respond by putting their trophy on OfferUp.

October 14:

  • Details of the world’s first room-temperature superconductor created by scientists at the University of Rochester, NY, were published in Nature. The details of the superconductor are retracted soon after when the female scientists state that the male scientists’ idea of “room temperature” is vastly different from theirs. The male scientists respond by telling the female scientists to put on sweaters and wear some socks in bed. Nature magazine declares bankruptcy soon after, citing a conflict of interest between Humans and Nature.

October 21:

  • Nasa’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft lands briefly on the asteroid Bennu, on a mission to collect dust, the largest sample from space since Apollo. Apollo’s mom concurs, citing numerous examples of muddy floors when Apollo still lived at home.

October 26:

  • NASA announces there is more water on the Moon than previously thought, in sunlit as well as shadowed regions. On further investigation, flip flops and beach towels can be seen near one of the bodies of water, suspected of belonging to Californians trying to find a place to go to the beach without being arrested.
“That’s weird. There’s no beer cooler.”

October 30:

  • A new DNA study of dogs suggests they were human’s first domesticated animal, 11,000 years ago at the end of the Bronze Age. Dogs everywhere protest, claiming that they were domesticated at the end of the Bone Age.

November:

November 02:

  • Baby Shark by Pinkfong becomes the most-watched video on YouTube with over 7.04 billion views. To illustrate the power of a song, I have copy/pasted the lyrics below. Currently, Yours Truly is working on a song with the lyrics, “Junior Mint, da, da, da, da, da, dee, dee, dee” hoping to strike it rich, too:

Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Baby shark

Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Mommy shark

Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Daddy shark

Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Grandma shark

Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Grandpa shark

Let’s go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Let’s go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Let’s go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Let’s go hunt

Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Run away

Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Safe at last

It’s the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
It’s the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
It’s the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
It’s the end

November 08:

  • The first test of a high-speed levitating pod system to carry people and cargo, by Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop in Las Vegas, Nevada is conducted. Branson changes the name after the Nevada governor insists virgins are rarely spotted in Sin City and the name is bad for the city’s image.

November 15:

  • World-record price for a Belgian racing pigeon called New Kim sold for €1.6m at auction. The person who won doesn’t know how much money that is, so he releases the pigeon in the nearest park.

November 24:

  • Scotland’s parliament votes to become the first country to make women’s hygiene products free. Women in Scotland protest; when asked why, they reply, “Because. We’re in a bad mood. That’s all you need to know.”

December:

December 01:

  • Chinese robotic spacecraft Chang’e-5 lands on the Moon as part of two-day mission to retrieve rock samples. They were unable to hold on to them though; upon seeing the US Rover, the two spacecraft began throwing rocks at each other.

December 05:

  • Russia begins vaccinating people with its Sputnik V vaccine in Moscow, despite the vaccine not finishing clinical trials. Russia refuses to release any data on the vaccine after people began growing a third eye and turning slightly green. On the upside, the green tint is a nice change from their usual paleness, and in addition, no one knows whether they are sick or not with the virus.

December 25:

  • Christmas occurs as usual, despite the universe’s best efforts to stop it. We hope you had a Merry One!

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11 thoughts on “What Happened In 2020: Lions And Tigers And Bears, Oh, My!

  • January 6, 2021 at 8:30 am
    Permalink

    Wow! Quite a calendar of events in 2020. I love that Baby Shark song. Tch! I learnt all these nursery rhymes just recently after spending time with my little niece. Love that song. I love ‘Skidamarink dink’ as well. Oh! How can I forget ‘Ants and Grasshopper’? Not to forget ‘It you’re Happy and you know it’ and ‘Insy Winsy Spider ’.

    Reply
    • January 6, 2021 at 5:51 pm
      Permalink

      That is so cute! How old is your niece? A couple of those are VERY old and it’s impressive you guys way over there know them. Wow. Skidamarink is from the 20s or 30s I think! Happy New Year, Luv!

      Reply
        • January 8, 2021 at 4:19 am
          Permalink

          I don’t know. Let me check. I didn’t see it in my email. I just now saw this one.

          Reply
        • January 8, 2021 at 4:21 am
          Permalink

          Did you get this reply? I don’t see your reply at all.

          Reply
  • January 6, 2021 at 1:52 pm
    Permalink

    This deserves a little book instead of a long freebie here! I’m working on a title suggestion

    Reply
  • January 6, 2021 at 5:12 pm
    Permalink

    I hate to have to do this, but . . .
    “whereas TOL 1338-b could easily be confused with TOL 1338-a.”
    They could never be confused, because the star always gets the -a designation.
    But if it’s a binary star, what is the other star called? Most likely, -b revolves around -a, and the second star is way far off, like the distance of Pluto from the Sun.

    Happy new year! Quickie quiz: So far, 2021 is
    a) better than
    b) the same as
    c) worse than
    2020.

    Reply
    • January 6, 2021 at 5:40 pm
      Permalink

      Hey, you KNOW my facts are always accurate!! How DARE you?

      Let’s see if I can pass the quiz: Is it “b”? No, wait! It’s “a”! No, no, it’s “c”. No, it’s “b”. Final answer.

      Happy New Year, Mike!

      Reply
  • January 6, 2021 at 5:41 pm
    Permalink

    See, I only know this about stars because I write science fiction.

    Reply
    • January 6, 2021 at 5:53 pm
      Permalink

      That’s true–and I learned something! It hurt, too.

      Reply

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