2023 Timeline: Year in Review, Britannica

January

Funeral of Pope Benedict XVI

(January 5, 2023)

Pope Benedict XVI is laid to rest. He resigned in 2013, and Pope Francis I was named his successor.

Doomsday Clock advances

(January 24, 2023)

The Doomsday Clock is moved ahead, indicating an unprecedented level of world troubles. The time is now 90 seconds to midnight.

 February

Tom Brady retires again

(February 1, 2023)

Quarterback Tom Brady announces that he is retiring from the National Football League (NFL). Brady led his teams to a record seven Super Bowl titles.

Kahramanmaraş earthquake

(February 6, 2023)

Turkey and Syria are hit by an earthquake and a severe aftershock. These high-magnitude events leave more than 50,000 people dead.

NBA record broken

(February 7, 2023)

LeBron James becomes the all-time highest scorer in the National Basketball Association (NBA), surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 38,387.  

Vermeer exhibit

(February 10, 2023)

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam puts 28 paintings by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer on display the largest exhibition of his work ever held.

March

Taylor Swift’s Eras tour

(March 17, 2023)

American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift launches a hugely successful world tour. Estimates suggest that the tour will generate more than $1 billion.

Donald Trump charged

(March 30, 2023)

Former U.S. president Donald Trump is indicted by a grand jury on 31 counts of falsifying business records, making him the first current or former U.S. president to be charged with a crime.

April

31st country joins NATO

(April 4, 2023)

Finland becomes the 31st member nation of NATO.

SpaceX

(April 20, 2023)

Uncrewed SpaceX Starship rocket successfully launches but explodes after takeoff.

Death of Harry Belafonte

(April 25, 2023)

American singer, actor, producer, and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

May

New most populous country

(May 1, 2023)

India’s population is thought to surpass China’s for the first time, making India the new most populous country.

Hollywood writers strike

(May 2, 2023)

The Hollywood Writers Guild of America strike begins. The strike would stretch to late September.

New vaccine

(May 3, 2023)

The first respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in the United States.

British coronation

(May 6, 2023)

King Charles III is crowned in the United Kingdom. His coronation is the first in seven decades, following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

Watch - How long did Prince Charles wait to become King Charles III?

Death of Tina Turner

(May 24, 2023)

American-born singer and longtime rhythm-and-blues icon Tina Turner dies. Turner was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo performer in 2021.

June

Death of Cormac McCarthy

(June 13, 2023)

American writer Cormac McCarthy is known for his dark novels set in the rural American South and Southwest.

Titan submersible implodes

(June 18, 2023)

OceanGate’s Titan submersible is believed to have imploded hours after beginning its descent to the wreck of the Titanic.

Affirmative action ends

(June 29, 2023)

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College marks the end of race-based affirmative action in college admissions in the United States.

July

Oppenheimer, Barbie released

(July 21, 2023)

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is released on the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, creating the Barbenheimer phenomenon wherein moviegoers flocked to theaters to see both flicks. Barbie soon becomes the highest-grossing film directed by a woman.

Watch - The true story of Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb

Twitter is rebranded

(July 24, 2023)

Elon Musk rebrands social media site Twitter as X after merging Twitter with his company X Holdings.

August

Maui wildfires

(August 8, 2023)

The island of Maui in Hawaii is struck by a series of wildfires that devastate the historic resort town of Lahaina.

Interact - Use the slider to see before (left) and after (right).

Women’s World Cup

(August 20, 2023)

Spain’s women’s team clinches its first Women’s World Cup.

New space race

(August 23, 2023)

India becomes the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon. Its Chandrayaan-3 probe is the first to land in the Moon’s south polar region.

September

Libya flooding

(September 10, 2023)

A strong Mediterranean cyclone, Storm Daniel, brings catastrophic flooding to eastern Libya. The unusually heavy rains kill more than 4,000 people.

Interact - Use the slider to see before (left)

Record temperature highs

(September 14, 2023)

NASA declares the summer of 2023 to be the warmest on record since record-keeping began in 1880.

Interact - Use the drop-down and hover to view mean temperature.

Global Land and Ocean

Mean temperature (°C) -0.6 1.2

Source: NOAA, CPC

Mass shooting milestone

(September 19, 2023)

The number of mass shootings in the United States this year reaches a new all-time high.

Interact - Hover over graph.

October

Nobel Prizes awarded

(October 2, 2023)

The 2023 Nobel Prizes are awarded this week.

Political showdown

(October 3, 2023)

Republican Kevin McCarthy is vote out as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the first time in history a speaker has been removed from office.

Israel-Hamas War begins

(October 7, 2023)

Palestinian militant group Hamas launches an attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 and leading Israel to declare war for the first time since 1973.

Jack Guez—AFP/Get ty Images

November

Russian invasion of Ukraine continues

(November 18, 2023)

The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine reaches a grim milestone in its second year, with more than 10,000 civilian deaths.

Interact - Click arrows. and after (right).

Rosalynn Carter dies

(November 19, 2023)

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter dies at age 96. Carter was the first first lady to have a formal office in the White House, establishing the modern Office of the First Lady. She was known later for her charity work.

Watch - How Rosalynn Carter redefined the role of first lady

Cricket World Cup

(November 19, 2023)

Australia defeats India to capture a record sixth title in the Cricket World Cup.

Iceland hit by quakes

(November 26, 2023)

Iceland experiences a series of more than 700 earthquakes, a predictor of major seismic activity, culminating in a volcanic eruption in December.

Watch - Ask a volcanologist: How volcanoes affect humans

Henry Kissinger dies

(November 29, 2023)

American political scientist Henry Kissinger was the first and only person to serve as national security adviser and secretary of state simultaneously.

ChatGPT updated

(November 30, 2023)

Popular AI software ChatGPT celebrates its one-year anniversary. The software was updated to use data up to April 2023 (previously, it was using data that was current up to September 2021).

December

Death of Sandra Day O’Connor

(December 1, 2023)

Sandra Day O’Connor was an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1981 to 2006. She was the first woman to serve on the Court.

Beyoncé’s film released

(December 1, 2023)

American singer-songwriter Beyoncé’s film Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, chronicling her successful world concert tour, has its world premiere.

Link to Britannica 2023 The Year in Review

‘We should believe’ Jose Ayala Lasso, now 91, the first UN Human Rights Commissioner, ‘We should not lose our faith in the capacity of human beings to act correctly.’

2023 – can things get worse? Inside Geneva

This content was published on December 27, 2023 - 11:13am, Imogen Foulkes

This time last year, I was sitting down with my journalist colleagues at the UN in Geneva to review 2022. There was a chink of hope that the pandemic was (almost over), but big new problems had appeared. A brand new war in Ukraine, continued crises in Yemen, Syria or Afghanistan, and the ever present threat of climate change.

A lot for the UN to deal with then. But wait until you see what 2023 had in store. On this week’s Inside Geneva I’m joined by my UN colleagues again to have a look back at this momentous year – and a quick glance at Inside Geneva’s coverage for 2023 shows just how momentous it was. 

In February, the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria. In May the renewed, and brutal, conflict in Sudan. In June, the Taliban’s oppression of women in Afghanistan, and in October, the start of a new war in the Middle East.

When this year started, I and my colleagues highlighted the ongoing war in Ukraine, human rights in China, and the situation in Afghanistan as ones to watch in 23. When we got together for this week’s episode, those topics hardly featured. Not that they are not important, but they had become overshadowed by what Emma Farges of Reuters calls the ‘existential’ challenges the UN, and in particular its humanitarian wing, is now facing.

And it’s not just new wars and crises; the old ones (Yemen or Syria) haven’t gone away. In December 2022 the UN appealed for $56 billion dollars to fund its humanitarian work in 2023. But by this December, it had received only around a third of that. So has it appealed for more in 2024? Actually no. UN aid agencies have realised there’s no point asking for money they won’t get, so instead their budget is smaller - $46 billion, and some programmes are being cut, including food distribution in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Falling apart

‘This is a multilateral system that is absolutely falling apart under the strain of all the extreme events it’s having to deal with,’ New York times contributor Nick-Cumming Bruce tells Inside Geneva.

External Content

But it’s falling part not because aid agencies are doing a bad job. In fact they have become the squeezed middle, expected to do more and more, in longer and longer crises, because global diplomacy is an utter failure. The most recent week long session of the UN Security Council is a prime example. The council finally agreed on a relatively meaningless resolution on Gaza, to ‘create conditions’ for more aid supplies, but didn’t call for a ceasefire. Frustrated aid workers, risking their lives in Gaza, tell us with one voice that there’s no chance of ramping up aid deliveries without at least a temporary end to the fighting.

This latest conflict in the Middle East has, Dorian Burkhalter of swissinfo tells Inside Geneva, been especially hard for the UN. ‘The UN has never lost so many humanitarian workers {in a single conflict}, and just seeing their helplessness, you can really tell that they’ve lost their protection, and they’re totally desperate. It’s very sad.’

It has also been hard for journalists. It’s a not often discussed truth that working out of Geneva is not necessarily the soft number it might first appear. Most of us have spent time in conflict zones, so when aid workers describe the effects of bombing, the desperate search for medical care, the lack of food, and even of water, we know what they are talking about.

We are also given all the graphic reports, and images, of what is happening in conflict zones. Many of my non journalist friends tell me they are no longer watching the news, because it is too distressing. That’s not an option journalists have; to report, we have to look, and we have to read, even if what we learn keeps us awake at night long after our story has been handed in to the editors.

Emma Farge tells Inside Geneva that she now sees her journalism as ‘before and after’ the war in Gaza, and describes covering it as ‘personal for everyone. It’s been difficult for journalists to navigate this information war and to really navigate it with your composure.’

Human rights – where are they now?

We also started 2023 with an interview with the new UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk, who told us he wanted the year to be a global recommitment to human rights, in the year the Universal Declaration on Human Rights marked its 75th anniversary.

At year’s end Türk admitted the challenges were huge – there are currently 55 conflicts ongoing around the world, he told me – but insisted this was a reason not to abandon our human rights standards as outdated and unworkable, but to uphold them with even more determination.

Perhaps we can take a note of hope from that, and from the vision and experience which all the former UN Human Rights Commissioners offered Inside Geneva in our series of exclusive interviews with them. ‘We should believe’ Jose Ayala Lasso, who, now 91, was the first commissioner.
‘We should not lose our faith in the capacity of human beings to act correctly.’

So despite all the distress that 2023 has brought, Ayala Lasso’s advice is what I’m holding onto as 2024 dawns.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva podcast to listen to the full interviews.
Link: Podcasts from Inside Geneva
Link: This article and others by Imogen Foulkes

Dementia, “Just a Minute: I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue!”

Dementia Strategy Summary:

- Contradict: Never!

- Responses: Vary them...

- Start: With their Key Event;

- Keep it Simple, Stupid: no more than the last 5 words will be retained.

To a relative by marriage.

Your great-niece provides occasional updates—the last one came in March this year—sharing insights and anecdotes about your elder sister’s progressive memory issues. It’s hard to deal with, isn’t it? Especially when faced with situations like her belief that your (late) eldest sister is still alive. In her world, of course, your eldest sister “is” still around, and each morning she wakes up with that certainty. If you asked when she last saw her, she probably wouldn’t quite recall—but she’d be sure it was sometime last week.

Frankly, exasperating as it can be, trying to contradict her makes no difference to her reality. Even if she accepts the truth in the moment, it will be forgotten within minutes. Worse still, correcting her often leads to confusion and distress. The approach that usually worked with your late sister was to play along—gently encouraging her to share happy memories about the person or place she was focused on, and then slowly trying to move the timeline forward, step by step, from there.

Ironically, what helped most with your late sister, almost until the end, was asking her about events she had shared with her younger sister. Their life-changing WWII evacuation together was often a good starting point, opening up several routes to edge the conversation forward. If she could recall a song, a tune, or a radio broadcast from that time, it seemed to ground her a little.

Another surprisingly helpful tactic was applying the rules from the BBC Radio 4 panel game “Just a Minute”, chaired for many years by Nicholas Parsons (and later Sue Perkins). The trick is for you to avoid hesitation, deviation, and especially repetition—even when faced with the same question over and over. In your eldest sister’s case, it was usually, “How’s the family?”, which she used to ask me every three to ten minutes. You may find, as I did, that giving a different answer each time can sometimes steer the conversation briefly in a new direction. Although, as the saying goes, all roads eventually lead to Rome—in her case, Rome came back around rather quickly!

It’s been suggested that a more fitting BBC Radio 4 panel game might be “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”—if only for the title! Among the wonderfully silly things that Humphrey Lyttelton used to encourage the panellists to do, one standout was “One Song to the Tune of Another”. Humming, whistling, or scat-singing a popular song from the person’s era (for example, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”)—and then asking them to join in or guess the title—can sometimes produce astonishing reanimations in someone who otherwise seems quite distant and lost.

Even without such brief respites, approaches like these are a lot more engaging and stimulating than repeating the same old answers to the same old questions over and over. And certainly much better than attempting to contradict the person's version of reality... So, good luck—try to find the fun in your time together, however fleeting it may be. And after all, even if it goes badly, she’ll have forgotten it soon enough (if only we were all so lucky).

Best seasonal greetings to all—including those who are still wondering: “How come the decorations are still up from sometime last week… or whenever?”