Year of Yore: 2024

Please note that this is a timeline of events of 2024 that caught my attention, and is circumscribed by my own personal biases and parochialism. If I have failed to cover your own favorite current events of 2024…well…you can always do your own timeline.

January

1: Steamboat Willie, wherein Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse debuted in 1928, enters the public domain.

4: Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, a Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft, loses a door section of its fuselage in mid-air and makes an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon.

14: Frederik X is proclaimed King of Denmark after the abdication of his mother, Queen Margrethe II.

Deaths: David Soul; William O’Connell (character actor); Norman Jewison.

February

5: King Charles III is diagnosed with cancer.

7: Five Marines are killed in a Super Stallion helicopter crash in San Diego County, California.

14: Mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Superbowl victory parade in Kansas City, Missouri results in one dead, 22 injured and three arrested.

15: The United Kingdom officially enters a recession.

16: The New York Supreme Court imposes a $350 million fine on Donald Trump and temporarily bars him from conducting business in New York for alleged financial fraud on the part of the Trump Organization.

21: The Alabama Supreme Court rules that the law recognizes frozen test-tube embryos as children.

23: Beginning of the Chinese Spy Balloon incident. Also: one new moon around is detected around Uranus, and two around Neptune.

28: Ghana outlaws homosexual rights advocacy.

Deaths: Carl Weathers; Toby Keith; Randy Sparks (New Christy Minstrels); Richard Lewis.

March

4: Trump v. Anderson: An unanimous Supreme Court overturns Colorado’s attempt to remove Donald Trump from the presidential ballot, holding that states do not have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

7: Sweden joins NATO.

9: Ireland rejects, by huge margins, two proposed constitutional amendments that would have redefined the family, and overturned the right of mothers to not have to work outside the home.

10: The 96th Academy Awards are held. Nobody cares.

14: Denmark announces a plan to draft women into the military.

22: A mass shooting at the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, Russia, leaves 135 dead. Also: the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, announces her cancer diagnosis.

26: Collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, after being struck by the container ship Dali, killing six.

28: Samuel Bankman-Fried is sentenced to 25 years for stealing $8 billion in a cryptocurrency fraud scheme.

Deaths: Steve Lawrence; M. Emmet Walsh; Joe Liebermann; Lou Gossett, Jr.; Barbara Rush.

April

5: New Jersey is hit by a magnitude 4.8 earthquake.

8: A total solar eclipse traverses North America, the last until 2044.

11: Announcement of the discovery of new frescoes in the ruins of Pompeii.

22: NASA announces that it has received the first decipherable data from Voyager I in five months.

25: Beginning of a deadly outbreak of 147 tornadoes over the Midwestern, Southern and High Plains regions of the U.S.

Deaths: Lou Conter (last survivor of the sinking of the U.S.S. Arizona, aged 102); Joe Flaherty (SCTV); Bishop Thomas Gumbleton; Clarence “Frogman” Henry; O.J. Simpson; Robert MacNeil; Whitey Herzog; Mike Pinder (the Moody Blues); Duane Eddy.

May

7: The Boy Scouts of America announces that from February 2025, it will be called “Scouting America” so as not to exclude girls.

8: Astra-Zenica withdraws its covid vaccine from the market.

10: Geomagnetic storms lead to widespread visibility of the Northern Lights.

19: Beginning of another deadly tornado outbreak in the American Midwest.

23: The Vatican announces approval of the canonization of Carlo Acutis, the first Millenial saint.

28: A natural gas explosion at an apartment building in Youngstown, Ohio kills one and injures seven.

30: Donald Trump is found guilty of 34 bogus felony counts in New York State.

Deaths: Richard Tandy (keyboardist, Electric Light Orchestra); Bernard Hill (Théoden King); David Sunburn; Dabney Coleman; Ivan Boesky.

June

3: Nigel Farage gets back into politics as the leader of the Reform UK party.

6: Beginning of the European Parliament elections, in which the elites are shocked to find out that the peoples of Europe are not content with the way things are now going.

7: Pat Sajak retires as host of Wheel of Fortune after 41 years.

11: Hunter Biden is convicted of three counts of felony possession of a firearm while under the influence of drugs.

14: Beginning of extreme heat conditions in Mecca that will claim the lives of about 1,300 Hajj pilgrims.

19: Two “Just Stop Oil” morons are arrested for attempting to vandalize three standing stones at Stonehenge with orange powder paint.

20: The Israel Antiquities Authority announces the discovery of a Canaanite shipwreck dating back to the late Bronze Age.

27: The U.S. Supreme Court allows “emergency” abortions in Idaho, notwithstanding Idaho’s abortion ban. Also: presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, after which the regime elites profess shock at Biden’s evident mental disintegration.

Deaths: William Anders (Apollo 8 astronaut); Mark James (songwriter, “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Suspicious Minds”); Howard Fineman; Benji Gregory (the kid on ALF); Willie Mays; Donald Sutherland; Martin Mull.

July

1: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds absolute immunity for a President exercising his constitutional functions while serving as President.

4: British general election. Labour wins, Two-Tier Kier becomes Prime Minister, and Nigel Farage is elected to the British Parliament for the first time.

5: Eruptions of Etna and Stromboli in Sicily. Also: Archbishop Carla Maria Viganò is excommunicated for alleged schism and rejection of Vatican II.

12: Involuntary manslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin for the 2021 shooting death of a cinematographer on a movie set are dismissed with prejudice on the grounds that the prosecution withheld evidence favorable to the defense.

13: Attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A member of the audience was killed shielding his family with his own body.

15: Dismissal of federal charges against Donald Trump on the grounds that the prosecutor was unlawfully appointed and lacked the authority to bring charges. Also: Trump names J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential running mate at the Republican convention.

19: Worldwide computer outages are attributed to a faulty Crowdstrike update, resulting in major service interruptions and the global grounding of flights with three major airlines.

21: Palace coup results in the replacement of Joe Biden by Kamala Harris as the Democrat Party’s presumptive nominee for the presidency.

23: Kimberly Cheatle resigns as head of the Secret Service in the wake of the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, as well as the revelation of where her priorities lay in regard to that organization’s mission.

26: Beginning of the blasphemy-infested, gender-bending summer Olympics in Paris.

27: The Appian Way in Rome is added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

29: Three children are stabbed to death in Southport, Merseyside, England, touching off protests over mass migration. In the wake of these protests, Prime Minister Kier Starmer announces forthcoming mass arrests of anyone protesting mass immigration, apologizes to immigrants for the behavior of Englishmen, and promises serious charges and convictions, all to take place within a week.

Deaths: Judith Belushi Pisano (widow of John Belushi); Shelley Duvall; Ruth Westheimer; Shannen Doherty; Richard Simmons; Lou Dobbs; Bob Newhart; Sheila Jackson Lee.

August

5: Hurricane Debby makes landfall in Florida.

6: Kamala Harris announces her choice of Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate.

12: Trump does a two-hour interview with Elon Musk over Twitter, attracting an audience so huge that technical difficulties ensue. Also: scientists believe they have confirmed the presence of liquid water half a dozen to a dozen miles below the surface of Mars.

19: Appearance of a rare blue supermoon in the sky.

23: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announces that he will drop out of the presidential race and endorses Donald Trump.

24: Pavel Durov, the owner of Telegram, is arrested in Paris on allegations of illegal activities over the social media platform.

Deaths: Patti Yasutake (Nurse Ogawa on Star Trek: TNG); Greg Kihn (the Greg Kihn Band); Gena Rowlands; Peter Marshall; Sr. Agnes Sasagawa (the visionary of Our Lady of Akita); Phil Donahue.

September

1: The allegedly far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) clean up in parliamentary elections in Saxony and Thuringia in Germany.

4: The Apalachee High School shooting in Winder, Georgia, in which four are killed and nine are wounded; the 14-year-old transgender shooter and his father are both brought up on charges.

10: Great Britain begins releasing thousands of prison inmates, citing prison overcrowding.

15: Second assassination attempt on Donald Trump at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida.

17-18: Thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies, apparently booby-trapped by Israel, explode across Lebanon and Syria, killing dozens and injuring thousands, including innocent bystanders.

25: New York City mayor Eric Adams is indicted on federal corruption charges.

26: Deadly Hurricane Helene makes landfall in Florida.

Deaths: James Earl Jones; James Darren; Dame Maggie Smith; Kathryn Crosby; Barbara Leigh-Hunt; Tito Jackson; Jim Sasser

October

1: Members of the International Longshoremans’ Association go on strike, impacting ports along the east coast and Gulf coast of the United States. The strike would be suspended two days later until January of 2025.

3: Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, announces that FEMA lacks the budget to assist Americans for the rest of the hurricane season. Also: the nation of Georgia outlaws gender transitioning, same-sex “marriage” and pro-homosexual propaganda, bypassing the president who refused to sign the bill into law.

9: Hurricane Milton makes landfall in Florida.

12: A would-be assassination attempt on Donald Trump is foiled with the arrest of an armed man at his rally in Coachella, California.

23: China and the Vatican extend their provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops another four years.

29: Beginning of devastating floods in Spain, resulting in hundreds of deaths.

Deaths: Cissy Houston; Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais; Ethel Kennedy (widow of RFK); Mitzi Gaynor; John Kinsel, Sr. (Navajo Code Talker); Rudy May; Linda LaFlamme (“White Bird”); Tom Jarriel; Teri Garr.

November

5: Donald Trump is elected President in a landslide, the second President in U.S. history to be elected to two non-consecutive terms; the GOP takes control of both Houses of Congress.

10: 34 Ukrainian drones attack Moscow.

17: Joe Biden is reported to have given Ukraine the OK to launch American missiles into Russia, threatening an escalation of the war.

19: British farmers protest at the Houses of Parliament in London over a new inheritance tax that threatens the extinction of family farms.

21: Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsenaro is indicted for allegedly attempting a coup after losing his country’s 2022 election. Also: The International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among others, for war crimes.

24: Vladimir Putin signs into law a bill that outlaws the adopting out of Russian children to citizens of countries where gender “transition” is legal, as well as propaganda material that promotes childlessness.

Deaths: Diane Coleman (founder of Not Dead Yet, which opposes assisted suicide); Peanut the squirrel; Quincy Jones; Andy Leek (Dexy’s Midnight Runners); Chuck Woolery; Barbara Taylor Bradford; Hal Lindsey (The Late, Great Planet Earth); Wayne Northrop.

December

1: Joe Biden pardons his worthless son of his pending firearms and tax evasion charges.

3: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declares martial law, only to be promptly overruled by the National Assembly and apologize on national television.

4: Murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan by a masked gunman who walked up and shot him from behind. Also: collapse of the French government following a vote of no confidence in the French parliament, leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Michel Barnier.

5: A magnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes off the northern coast of California.

8: Re-opening of Notre Dame Cathedral, which the present occupiers of the Church try to turn into a festival of modernism. Also: Fall of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, followed by the Israeli invasion of Syria into the Golan Heights.

10: A federal judge blocks Kroger’s acquisition of Albertsons, resulting in Albertsons suing Kroger for breach of contract.

13: The great drone incursion crisis story in the northeastern United States begins picking up steam.

16: Abundant Life Christian School shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, leaves two dead (not including the shooter) and six wounded.

20: A vehicle ramming attack by a Saudi immigrant at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, leaves 5 dead and more than 200 injured.

22: A woman on a subway train is burned to death by an illegal alien who deliberately lit her clothes on fire and fanned the flames. He was arrested and charged with murder.

24: Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg announces that he will abdicate in October of 2025 in favor of his son, Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume.

Deaths: Michael Cole (The Mod Squad); George Joseph Kresge, Jr. (aka The Amazing Kreskin); Olivia Hussey; Jimmy Carter; Linda Lavin.

I don’t know about anybody else, but for me, 2024 ended in a way that, this same time last year, I would never have expected. I expected chaos in the streets in the wake of the national elections in November, which — thankfully — didn’t happen. I also did not expect the dramatic and virtually instantaneous rescue in October from my increasingly black-pilling career path. For this I am also thankful.

As we turn over a new year and switch out our calendars, it pays to remind ourselves that everything, including the future, is in the hands of an unimaginably benevolent Divine Providence, outside the purview of which nothing whatsoever exists or happens.

It seems fitting to close this retrospective on 2024 with one of my two favorite prayers from the Ordinary of the traditional Mass¹, the Hanc igitur:

Wherefore, we beseech Thee, O Lord, graciously to receive this oblation which we Thy servants, and with us Thy whole family, offer up to Thee: dispose our days in Thy peace; command that we be delivered from eternal damnation and numbered among the flock of Thine elect. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

1. The other one, in case you were wondering, is the Munda cor meum, which comes right before the Gospel:

Cleanse my heart and my lips, O almighty God, Who didst cleanse with a burning coal the lips of the prophet Isaias; and vouchsafe in Thy loving kindness so to purify me that I may be enabled worthily to announce Thy holy Gospel. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.