2022 Recap: Royalty, Judicial Drama, and the Slap Heard Around the World

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Caption: Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, who was the host at the 2022 Oscars.

Simran Vaswani, PhotoJournalist

2022 has been quite the rollercoaster, and many events have happened throughout the year. Many special occasions have occurred including the death of one of the longest reigning British monarchs, Queen Elizabeth II to the scientists pinpointing how star formation in our galaxy began. So here are some of the top events of 2022:

Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of 96. Queen Elizabeth has accomplished so much throughout her years and had a peaceful and solemn death. One of her many accomplishments include being the longest serving monarch of all of the UK. She also enlisted in the women’s Auxiliary Territory Service (ATS), during World War II and served. She was the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress which shows massive improvement and shows how notable she is. 

Pop Culture also had many moments in 2022 that will be remembered for years to come. An example of this is the iconic Will Smith slap. If you have not already heard of this, you must have been under a rock all year. Will Smith struts up to the stage and slaps Chris Rock the presenter at the 2022 Oscars for insulting his wife (Jada Pinkette Smith). Another iconic moment of 2022 is our metaphoric Queen, Taylor Swift graduating from New York University. That’s not all she did, she even broke Billboard Records! (and sadly also TicketMaster). Yet, how could we forget the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial? A Virginia Jury handed Johnny Depp a victory over former wife Amber Heard for accusations of domestic abuse. 

In sports news a lot has happened. Tom Brady retired! This of course crushed many fans, especially because he did not get to win another SuperBowl to finish off his career.

“Tom Brady is the best football player of all time, and always will be” says Alisha Bhavsar (10).

Tom Brady is the best football player of all time, and always will be.

— Alisha Bhavsar

Wait, never mind. Tom Brady returned to football again a month after he announced his retirement. Other athletes did retire though, some of the greatest of their sport. A few major tennis players also announced that they were leaving the sport, including Serena Williams and Roger Federer. Serena states that the chances of her coming back to the sport are very high, and Roger Federer explains that his surgery in 2021 recovery did not go as well as he hoped, and decided to retire from the sport. Both athletes have accomplished so much in tennis, with Serena having the second largest number of Grand Slam wins with 367, just behind Roger Federer. Her win-loss record is 858-156, and it just shows how great of a tennis player she is, and how greatly she will be missed on the court. Federer is seen to be the greatest tennis player of all time and has over 1000 wins in the sport in total.

2022 has been eventful and full of excitement. I can’t wait to see what 2023 has in store for us next year!