2020 Year in Review

January 1 – The Australian bushfires of 2019, or "Black Summer", that have killed as many as 500 million animals so far continues into the new year as the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) are deployed to New South Wales to assist mass evacuation efforts.
January 1 - Recreational marijuana becomes legal in Illinois.
January 1 - All books and films published in 1924 enter the public domain in the United States.
January 1 – David Stern, American businessman and NBA commissioner dies at age 77 after suffering a brain hemorrhage a few weeks earlier.
January 3 – 2019–20 Persian Gulf crisis: A U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport kills Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
January 5 – Second Libyan Civil War: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announces that Turkish troops will be deployed to Libya on behalf of the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord.
January 7 - Neil Peart, Canadian drummer and lyricist of the rock band Rush dies at age 67 from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
January 8 - 2019–20 Persian Gulf crisis: Iran launches ballistic missiles at two Iraqi military bases hosting American soldiers, injuring multiple personnel.
January 8 - 2019–20 Persian Gulf crisis: Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 is mistakenly shot down by Iran's armed forces shortly after takeoff from Tehran Imam Khomeini Airport, killing all 176 people on board.
January 8 - The American Cancer Society reports a 2.2% drop in the cancer death rate between 2016 and 2017, the largest single-year decline in mortality for this disease ever recorded in the U.S.
January 8 - Infanta Pilar de Borbón, Spanish royal who was the elder daughter of Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona and Princess María Mercedes of the Two Sicilies, and older sister of King Juan Carlos I, dies at age 83 from colon cancer.
January 9 - A rare, circumbinary planet (orbits two stars) called TOI 1338-b is discovered by a high school student.
January 9 - Boko Haram militants assault a Nigerien military base at Chinagodrar, killing at least 89 Nigerien soldiers.
January 9 - The Justice Department reportedly finds "nothing of consequence" in its two-year investigation into the business dealings of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
January 10 – For the first time since the Great Recession, women outnumber men in the American workforce, with women holding 50.04% of all jobs.
January 10 - Guido Messina, Italian racing cyclist who won five world titles in the individual 4000-meter pursuit between 1948 and 1956, and a gold medal with the Italian team at the 1952 Olympics and won the first stage of the 1955 Giro d'Italia, dies at age 89.
January 10 - Qaboos bin Said, Sultan of Oman since 1970 and a fifteenth-generation descendant of the founder of the House of Al Said, and the longest-serving leader in the Middle East and Arab world, dies at the age of 79 from colon cancer.
January 12 – Roger Scruton, British philosopher and writer who specialized in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views, dies at age 75 from cancer.
January 15 – President Donald Trump and China's Vice Premier Liu He sign the U.S.–China Phase One trade deal in Washington, D.C.
January 15 - Christopher Tolkien, British academic and editor and son of author J. R. R. Tolkien, dies at age 95.
January 16 – The first impeachment trial of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, begins in the U.S. Senate. He was acquitted on February 5.
January 18 – Yemeni Civil War: 111 Yemeni soldiers and 5 civilians are killed in a drone and missile attack on a military camp near Ma'rib.
January 20 – 22,000 people attend a gun rights rally at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond to protest proposed gun laws.
January 21 – COVID-19 pandemic: The first case of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the United States is confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
January 21 - Terry Jones, Welsh actor and comedian and member of the Monty Python team, dies at age 77 from frontotemporal dementia.
January 24 – Donald Trump becomes the first sitting president to personally attend the annual March for Life anti-abortion protest in Washington, D.C.
January 26 - A helicopter crash in Calabasas, California kills nine people, including basketball star Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna Bryant.
January 29 – U.S. president Donald Trump signs the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, a North American trade agreement set to replace NAFTA.
January 29 - COVID-19 pandemic: President Donald Trump establishes the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
January 30 – COVID-19 pandemic: The World Health Organization (WHO) declares the outbreak of the disease as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the sixth time that this measure has been invoked since 2009.
January 30 – COVID-19 pandemic: The CDC confirms the first case of human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the U.S.
January 31 – The United Kingdom and Gibraltar formally withdraw from the European Union, beginning an 11-month transition period.
January 31 - COVID-19 pandemic: President Donald Trump imposes travel restrictions preventing foreign nationals from entering the U.S. if they visited China within the previous two weeks.
January 31 - At a human trafficking summit in the White House, Trump reportedly creates a new White House position dedicated solely to addressing the issue.
January 31 - Mary Higgins Clark, American novelist, dies at age 92.  Her suspense novels became very popular, and have sold more than 100 million copies in the United States alone.

February 3 – George Steiner, French-American literary critic and essayist, dies at age 90.  His family were Austrian Jews who fled to Paris and then to New York City to escape the Nazis.  His wife of 65 years died 10 days after he did.
February 4 – President Donald Trump delivers his third State of the Union address. Among the guests are Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
February 4 - Daniel arap Moi, longest-serving President of Kenya from 1978 to 2002, dies at age 95 from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage.
February 5 - Utah Senator Mitt Romney becomes the first ever senator to vote to remove a president of his own political party.
February 5 - Kirk Douglas, American actor, director and producer, dies at age 103.  He survived a helicopter crash in 1991 and suffered a stroke in 1996.  He was married to his second wife for 65 years.  He was one of the last surviving stars of the film industry's Golden Age and was father to actor Michael Douglas through his first marriage.
February 6 – The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) gives permission for Nuro Inc. to deploy up to 5,000 driverless delivery vehicles across the country. It is the first time the NHTSA ever allows deployment of automated driving systems without meeting all national auto safety standards.
February 7 - Orson Bean, American actor, comedian and producer, who was also a game show and talk show host, dies at age 91 after being struck by a car.
February 7 - Li Wenliang, Chinese ophthalmologist known for raising awareness of early COVID-19 infections in Wuhan, dies at age 33 from the illness after contracting it from a patient who was not known to be infected.  His second child was born June 12, 2020.  His parents became infected but later recovered.
February 10 – Former Congressman J. C. Watts, who served in Oklahoma's 4th Congressional District as a Republican, launches the first all-news channel aimed at African Americans, the Black News Channel.
February 11 – COVID-19 pandemic: The World Health Organization (WHO) names the disease COVID-19.
February 13 – NASA publishes a detailed study of Arrokoth, the most distant body ever explored by a spacecraft, which New Horizons passed by on its journey through the Kuiper belt.
February 13 – The McClatchy newspaper chain files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
February 14 – Lynn Cohen, American actress known for her roles in Sex and the City and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, dies at age 86.  She was married to her second husband for 56 years and has one son.
February 16 - Larry Tesler, American computer scientist who worked for Xerox PARC, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo!, and helped to develop the idea of copy and paste functionality, dies at age 74.
February 17 - The national Boy Scouts of America files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Independently funded local councils are not affected.
February 18 - José Bonaparte, Argentine paleontologist who discovered a plethora of South American dinosaurs and mentored a new generation of Argentine paleontologists, dies at age 91 in his sleep.  He was the son of an Italian sailor, with no close connection to Napoleon's House of Bonaparte.
February 19 – The Utah Senate votes to decriminalize polygamy.
February 21 - Wells Fargo agrees to pay a $3 billion fine as a result of the 2016 fake account scandal.
February 22 – Kiki Dimoula, Greek poet who was the first woman ever to be included in the prestigious French publisher Gallimard’s poetry series, dies at age 88.
February 24 - Clive Cussler, American author and underwater explorer, dies at age 88.  He was the founder and chairman of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), which has discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and numerous other notable underwater wrecks. He was the sole author or lead author of more than 80 books.  His son Dirk was a co-writer on 8 of his books.
February 24 - Katherine Johnson, American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights, dies at age 101.  Her husband of 60 years was a Korean War veteran who died in 2019.  They had six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren and lived in Hampton, Virginia.  She encouraged her grandchildren and students to pursue careers in science and technology.  She was a member of Carver Memorial Presbyterian Church for 50 years.  In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
February 24 - Diana Serra Cary, American child actress, dies at age 101.  She was known as Baby Peggy and was one of the last living film stars of the Silent Era of Hollywood and the last living person with a substantial career in silent films.  Her birth name was Peggy-Jean Montgomery.
February 25 – Amazon opens its first cashierless grocery store, located in Seattle.
February 25 - Mario Bunge, Argentine-Canadian philosopher and physicist who was critical of postmodernism and feminist philosophy and popularly known for his opinions against pseudoscience, dies at age 100.  He was married to mathematician Marta Bunge for 61 years.
February 25 - Hosni Mubarak, 41st Prime Minister and 4th President of Egypt, dies at age 91.  He was married to his wife Suzanne for 61 years.
February 25 - Dmitry Yazov, Soviet and Russian marshal (the highest military rank of the Soviet Union in the Red Army), dies at age 95 after a serious and prolong illness.  He was arrested for his involvement in the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, also known as the August Coup, a failed attempt made by Communist leaders of the Soviet Union to take control of the country from Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Soviet President and General Secretary.
February 27 – 2020 stock market crash: The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunges by 1,190.95 points, or 4.4%, to close at 25,766.64, its largest one-day point decline at the time. This follows several days of large falls, marking the worst week for the index since 2008, triggered by fears of the spreading COVID-19.
February 27 - Marine commandant General David H. Berger orders the removal of Confederate symbols from Marine Corps bases around the world.
February 28 – Syrian Civil War: Ambassadors of all 29 NATO allies meet in the North Atlantic Council to express solidarity with Turkey after 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in an airstrike by pro-Syrian government forces.
February 28 – Freeman Dyson, British-born American physicist and mathematician and statistician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, and engineering, dies at age 96 from complications following a fall.  Dyson disagreed with the establishment scientific position that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a material driver of planetary temperature increases. He believed that some of the effects of increased CO2 levels are favorable and not taken into account by climate scientists, such as increased agricultural yield, and further that the positive benefits of CO2 likely outweigh the negative effects.  He was skeptical about the simulation models used to predict climate change, arguing that political efforts to reduce causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority. He also signed the World Climate Declaration entitled "There is No Climate Emergency".
February 29 - Luxembourg becomes the first country in the world to make all public transport free to use.
February 29 - A conditional peace agreement is signed between the U.S. and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, leading the U.S. to begin gradually withdrawing troops from Afghanistan on March 10.
February 29 - COVID-19 pandemic: The first death from COVID-19 in the U.S. is reported by officials in Washington state, as the total number of cases nationwide reaches 66.
February 29 – Éva Székely, Hungarian swimmer, Olympic champion, dies at age 92.  She won the gold medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and the silver medal at the 1956 Summer Olympics, set six world records, and won 44 national titles.  She held the first world record in the 400 m individual medley in 1953.

March 1 - Jack Welch, American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer, dies at age 84 from kidney failure.  He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE) between 1981 and 2001. When he retired from GE, he received a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in business history.  In 2006, Welch's net worth was estimated at $720 million.  Welch identified politically as a Republican.  He stated that global warming is "the attack on capitalism that socialism couldn't bring", and that it is a form of "mass neurosis".  Yet he said that every business must embrace green products and green ways of doing business, "whether you believe in global warming or not ... because the world wants these products".  In December 2016, Welch joined a business forum assembled by then president-elect Donald Trump to provide strategic and policy advice on economic issues.
March 4 - COVID-19 pandemic: At least 130 cases of COVID-19 are reported in the United States, with ten deaths in Washington State and one in California.  California governor Gavin Newsom declares a state of emergency.
March 5 – The International Criminal Court authorizes the Afghanistan War Crimes inquiry to proceed, reportedly allowing for the first time for U.S. citizens to be investigated.
March 5 - COVID-19 pandemic: The Senate approves an $8.3 billion federal emergency aid package in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.  President Trump signs the bill into law the next day.
March 5 - The Arizona House of Representatives passes a bill banning transgender females from sports.
March 6 - COVID-19 pandemic: Florida reports two deaths from COVID-19, the first confirmed U.S. fatalities outside of the west coast.
March 7 – COVID-19 pandemic: Washington, D.C. records its first case of COVID-19.
March 8 – Max von Sydow, Swedish-French actor, dies at age 90.  He had a 70-year career in European and American cinema, television, and theatre, appearing in more than 150 films and several television series in multiple languages.  He became a French citizen in 2002, and lived in France for the last decades of his life.  Von Sydow made his American film debut as Jesus Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
March 9 – International share prices fall sharply in response to a Russo-Saudi oil price war and the impact of COVID-19. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunges more than 2,000 points, the largest fall in its history up to that point.  Oil prices also plunge by as much as 30% in early trading, the biggest fall since 1991.
March 9 - The U.S. begins a conditional troop withdrawal from Afghanistan; American troop numbers are to be reduced from 12,000 to 8,600 within 135 days.
March 10 – COVID-19 pandemic: COVID-19 cases in the U.S. exceed 1,000, with a 50% increase within a 24-hour period and infections reported in 35 states.
March 11 – COVID-19 pandemic: The World Health Organization declares the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.
March 11 - COVID-19 pandemic: President Trump announces a 30-day ban on incoming travel from Europe (with the exception of the United Kingdom), effective midnight EDT on March 13.  The travel ban is extended to the UK and Ireland on March 16.
March 11 - Persian Gulf crisis: A British soldier and two Americans are killed in a rocket attack in Taji, Iraq.
March 11 - The Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration announce the arrest of more than 600 alleged members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
March 12 – Global stock markets crash due to continued concerns over COVID-19 and the U.S. travel ban on the Schengen Area. The DJIA goes into free fall, losing over 2,300 points, the worst losses for the index since 1987.
March 13 – COVID-19 pandemic: The government of Nepal announces that Mount Everest will be closed to climbers and the public for the rest of the season due to concerns from the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia.
March 13 - COVID-19 pandemic: President Trump declares a national emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, freeing up $50 billion in disaster relief funds.
March 13 - The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants emergency authorization for a coronavirus test by Swiss diagnostics maker Roche.
March 13 - Bill Gates steps down from the board of Microsoft to focus on philanthropic activities.
March 13 – Dana Zátopková, Czech javelin thrower, dies at age 97.  She won the gold medal for javelin at the 1952 Summer Olympics (only an hour after her husband, Emil Zátopek, won the 5,000 m), and the silver medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics. She was the European champion in 1954 and 1958. She also set a world record in 1958 (55.73 m) when she was 35, making her the oldest woman to break one in an outdoor athletics event.
March 16 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 2,997.10, the single largest point drop in history and the second-largest percentage drop ever at 12.93%, an even greater crash than Black Monday (1929). This follows the U.S. Federal Reserve announcing that it will cut its target interest rate to 0–0.25%.
March 16 - COVID-19 pandemic: Most schools nationwide are closed by this date.
March 16 - The first Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating a potential COVID-19 vaccine begins at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.
The 2020 Kentucky Derby is postponed until September 5, the first postponement since 1945.
March 17 - COVID-19 pandemic: European leaders close the EU's external and Schengen borders for at least 30 days in an effort to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
March 17 - COVID-19 pandemic: West Virginia becomes the 50th state to have a confirmed a case of COVID-19.
Roger Mayweather, American professional boxer and trainer, dies at age 58 after years of deteriorating health.  He competed from 1981 to 1999. He was a two-weight world champion, having held the WBA and lineal super featherweight titles from 1983 to 1984, and the WBC light welterweight title from 1987 to 1989. Additionally, he held the IBO light welterweight title in 1994, and the IBO welterweight title from 1994 to 1995.  He came from a family of boxers, including two brothers and his nephew Floyd Mayweather Jr.
March 18 - A 5.9 earthquake hits Salt Lake City, Utah.
March 18 - COVID-19 pandemic: The European Broadcasting Union announces that the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 will be cancelled due to COVID-19 in Europe, the first cancellation in the contest's 64-year history.
March 18 - Solidarity trial, a WHO-sponsored group dedicated to finding a cure against COVID-19, is announced by Director-General of WHO Tedros Adhanom.
March 18 - COVID-19 pandemic: President Trump signs the Families First Coronavirus Response Act into law and announces he will invoke the Defense Production Act to improve U.S. medical resources and that he directed the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) to suspend evictions and foreclosures of federal housing until the end of April.  He also announces the temporary closure of the Canada–United States border; cross-border trade will continue.
March 18 - Catherine Hamlin, Australian obstetrician and gynecologist, dies at age 96.  She and her husband, New Zealander Reginald Hamlin, co-founded the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, the world's only medical center dedicated exclusively to providing free obstetric fistula repair surgery to poor women suffering from childbirth injuries.  They also co-founded an associated non-profit organization, Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia.
March 18 - Alfred Worden, American astronaut, dies at age 88 after being hospitalized for an infection.  He was the command module pilot for the Apollo 15 lunar mission in 1971, and one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon, he orbited it 74 times in the command module (CM) Endeavour.  Worden spent three days alone in the CM, becoming in the process the individual who traveled the farthest from any other human being.  During Apollo 15's return flight to Earth, Worden performed an extravehicular activity (EVA), or spacewalk, to retrieve film cassettes from cameras on the exterior of the spacecraft. It was the first "deep space" EVA in history, and as of 2020 remains the one that has taken place farthest from Earth.  Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States, stated, "We stand on the shoulders of space pioneers like Al, and America will always marvel at his achievements and look to him for inspiration as we strive to go farther and faster than ever before."
March 19 – COVID-19 pandemic: The Department of Labor reports that 281,000 Americans filed for unemployment in the last week, a 33 percent increase over the prior week and the biggest percentage increase since 1992.
March 20 - COVID-19 pandemic: The worldwide death toll from COVID-19 surpasses 10,000 as the total number of cases reaches a quarter of a million.
March 20 - The Bhadla Solar Park is commissioned and becomes the world's largest solar park.
March 20 - Kenny Rogers, American country singer and songwriter, dies at age 81 from natural causes while under hospice care at his home in Georgia.  Rogers was particularly popular with country audiences but also charted more than 120 hit singles across various music genres, topping the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone. He sold more than 100 million records worldwide during his lifetime, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.  His fame and career spanned multiple genres: jazz, folk, pop, rock, and country. He remade his career and was one of the most successful cross-over artists of all time.
March 21 – COVID-19 pandemic: Biotech company Cepheid Inc reports that it has been granted FDA approval for a new rapid diagnostic test, able to detect COVID-19 in 45 minutes.
March 22 - COVID-19 pandemic: President Trump says the National Guard has been activated in California, Washington, and New York, thus far the most impacted states during the pandemic.  The Washington National Guard clarifies that it was yet to be "activated", only put-on stand-by.
March 22 - The USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) hospital ship is announced to be deployed to New York. The USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) is to be deployed to Los Angeles.
March 22 - Rand Paul (R-KY) is the first senator to test positive for COVID-19.
March 23 – Colorado becomes the 22nd state to abolish the death penalty.
March 24 - COVID-19 pandemic: India goes into lockdown to contain COVID-19. The total number of people in the world facing some form of pandemic-related movement restriction now exceeds 2.6 billion, a third of the global population.
March 24 - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang reports that the domestically transmitted epidemic was "basically blocked" and it is now under control.  Two days later, China temporarily suspends entry for foreign nationals with visas or residence permits, effective midnight March 28.
March 24 - The International Olympic Committee and Japan suspend the 2020 Summer Olympics until 2021.
March 24 - COVID-19 pandemic: The Dow Jones jumps by over 2,100 points, or 11.3 percent—its biggest one-day percentage gain since 1933.
March 24 - The U.S. box office records zero revenue for the first time ever.
March 24 - Nevada governor Steve Sisolak bans the use of anti-malaria drugs for COVID-19 treatment, notably chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.
March 24 - FBI agents kill a man in Belton, Missouri suspected of plotting a bombing attack at a Kansas City hospital believed to be treating COVID-19 patients.
March 24 - A Gallup poll places President Trump's approval rating at 49 percent, his highest thus far.  A separate Hill-HarrisX poll places him at 50 percent, his highest since August 2018.
March 25 - COVID-19 pandemic: Nationwide COVID-19 deaths surpass 1,000 as the total number of cases reach almost 69,000.
March 25 - The White House and the Senate agree to a $2 trillion stimulus package—the largest in U.S. history—to boost the economy amid the ongoing pandemic.  The Senate subsequently approves the negotiated bill (the CARES Act) in a 96–0 vote.  Trump signs the bill into law on March 27 after a House voice vote.
March 25 - The Pentagon orders a 60-day halt on all overseas troop travel and movement as 227 U.S. troops have thus far tested positive for COVID-19. The withdrawal from Afghanistan will continue.
March 26 - COVID-19 pandemic: Global COVID-19 cases reach 500,000, with nearly 23,000 deaths confirmed.  The US surpasses China and Italy in total number of known COVID-19 cases, with at least 81,321 cases and more than 1,000 deaths.
March 26 - Militants in the Philippines, Syria, Yemen, and Libya agree to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres' call for a ceasefire; some accept medical aid for themselves and civilians in their communities. Guterres also asked wealthy countries to provide $2 billion to aid in fighting the virus. Colombia and Venezuela discussed a common response to the global pandemic, and the UAE airlifts aid to Iran.
March 26 - COVID-19 pandemic: Nationwide COVID-19 infections exceed 82,000—surpassing infections in China and Italy—as the U.S. now has more cases reported than any other country to date.
March 26 - The Department of Labor reports that 3.28 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the last week, the largest increase in U.S. history. It supersedes the all-time high of 695,000 in October 1982.
March 26 - The Trump administration indicts Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro's government of drug trafficking and narcoterrorism and offers a $15 million reward for information leading to Maduro's arrest.
March 26 - The Space Force launches its first satellite, a $1.4 billion Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF-6) military communications satellite.
March 26 - Princess María Teresa of Bourbon-Parma, Spanish-French royal, dies at age 86 from COVID-19.  She was a member of the House of Bourbon-Parma, a cadet branch of the Spanish royal family. She was a socialist activist, earning the nickname "Red Princess", and a monarchist who supported the Carlist movement.
March 27 – North Macedonia becomes the 30th country to join NATO.
March 29 – U.S.-led coalition troops withdraw from Iraq's K-1 Air Base, the third base transferred to the Iraqi military this month.
March 30 - The Summer Olympics are rescheduled from July 23 to August 8, 2021.
March 30 – 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war: The price of Brent Crude falls 9% to $23 per barrel, the lowest level since November 2002.
March 31 - COVID-19 pandemic: Nationwide reported COVID-19 cases exceed 163,000 as the national death toll reaches 3,000. Three-quarters of the U.S. population are under lockdown as Maryland, Virginia, Arizona and Tennessee become the latest states to restrict movement.
March 31 - U.S. dairy producers dump thousands of gallons of milk as farmers cannot get their product to market due to a truck driver shortage.
March 31 - The Federal Communications Commission mandates cell phone providers implement STIR/SHAKEN by June 30, 2021 for large carriers and June 30, 2022 for small carriers to prevent robocalls maliciously using caller ID spoofing to avoid being traced.
March 31 - A 6.5 earthquake strikes Central Idaho.

April 1 - COVID-19 pandemic: China reports 130 asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, its first reported asymptomatic cases.
April 1 - Yemen's internationally recognized government releases more than 470 of its prisoners amid concerns of the spread of the virus in Yemen's overcrowded jails. The United Nations Human Rights Council has called for the release of all political prisoners.
April 1 - The Trump administration deploys anti-drug Navy ships and AWACS planes near Venezuela in reportedly the largest military build-up in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama.
April 2 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 1 million worldwide.
April 2 – William Frankland, British immunologist, dies at age 108 from COVID-19.  His achievements included the popularization of the pollen count as a piece of weather-related information to the British public, speculation regarding the effects of overly sterile living environments, and the prediction of increased levels of allergy to penicillin. He continued to work for a number of years after turning 100.  In an interview weeks before his death he recounted some memories of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
April 3 – COVID-19 pandemic: The CDC recommends all citizens consider wearing cloth or fabric face coverings in public.
April 5 - COVID-19 pandemic: The first case of COVID-19 in a zoo animal is reported: a four-year-old female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City.
April 5 - Honor Blackman, English actress, dies at age 94 from natural causes.  She was widely known for the roles of Cathy Gale in The Avengers (1962–1964), Bond girl in Goldfinger (1964), Julia Daggett in Shalako (1968) and Hera in Jason and the Argonauts (1963). She is also known for her role as Laura West in the ITV sitcom The Upper Hand (1990–1996).
April 5 - Margaret Burbidge, English-born American astrophysicist, dies at age 100 after suffering a fall.  During the 1960s and 70s she worked on galaxy rotation curves and quasars, discovering the most distant astronomical object then known. In the 1980s and 90s she helped develop and utilize the Faint Object Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. Burbidge was well known for her work opposing discrimination against women in astronomy.
April 5 - Mahmoud Jibril, former Prime Minister of Libya, dies at age 67 from cardiac arrest.  He served as the interim Prime Minister of Libya for seven and a half months during the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and the Libyan Civil War.
April 6 – The United States designates the Russian Imperial Movement as a terrorist organization and imposes sanctions on its leaders; it is the first white supremacist group the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization.
April 6 - COVID-19 pandemic: Nationwide COVID-19 deaths surpass 10,000, with more than 19,800 recoveries.
April 6 - President Trump signs an executive order encouraging future long-term commercial exploitation of various celestial bodies and mining of lunar resources.
April 6 – James Drury, American actor, dies at age 85 from natural causes.  He is best known for having played the title role in the 90-minute weekly Western television series The Virginian, which was broadcast on NBC from 1962 to 1971.  The series was loosely based on The Virginian: Horseman of the Plains, a 1902 Western novel by Owen Wister that Hollywood had previously adapted for movies.  Drury supported Barry Goldwater in the 1964 United States presidential election.  His son Timothy Drury went on tour with the Eagles from 1994 to 2000.
April 7 – COVID-19 pandemic: Japan declares a state of emergency in response to COVID-19 and finalizes a stimulus package worth 108 trillion yen ($990 billion), equal to 20% of the country's GDP.
April 8 - COVID-19 pandemic: China ends the lockdown in Wuhan, with people allowed to leave the city for the first time in 76 days.
April 8 - The Saudi-led coalition declares a unilateral ceasefire in its operations against Houthi forces in Yemen in accordance with United Nations-led efforts.
April 8 - COVID-19 pandemic: Over 100 inmates at Monroe Correctional Complex in Monroe, Washington riot after six inmates test positive for COVID-19.
April 10 - Kivu Ebola epidemic: The Democratic Republic of the Congo reports the first case of Ebola since February 2020. The outbreak has killed more than 2,200 people since August 2018.
April 10 - The ESA/JAXA space probe BepiColombo makes its final gravity assist around Earth and begins to depart for Venus, where it will make several gravity assist maneuvers before finally arriving at Mercury in 2025.
April 10 - COVID-19 pandemic: The death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 100,000 globally, a ten-fold increase from March 20.
April 10 - EU finance ministers agree on a €540 billion ($652 billion) loan package to alleviate the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
April 11 - COVID-19 pandemic: The U.S. becomes the country with the highest number of reported COVID-19 deaths: over 20,000, overtaking Italy.
April 11 - For the first time in U.S. history, all 50 states have simultaneous federal major disaster declarations after Wyoming receives the final declaration. Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico also have major disaster declarations by this time.
April 12 - COVID-19 pandemic: Pope Francis livestreams the Urbi et Orbi blessing for Easter; it is the second blessing in a month, with the first taking place on March 27 during a special prayer service for the end of the pandemic.
April 12 - OPEC and allies strike a deal to cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels per day, the largest such cut agreed upon, starting May 1.
April 12 - Stirling Moss, English F1 driver, dies at age 90 after a long illness.  He won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship".  In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times.
April 13 - Ryo Kawasaki, Japanese jazz fusion guitarist and composer, dies at age 73 in Estonia.  He is best known as one of the first musicians to develop and popularize the fusion genre and for helping to develop the guitar synthesizer in collaboration with Roland Corporation and Korg. His album Ryo Kawasaki and the Golden Dragon Live was one of the first all-digital recordings and he created the Kawasaki Synthesizer for the Commodore 64.  In the mid-1980s, Kawasaki drifted out of performing music in favor of writing music software for computers. He also produced several techno dance singles, formed his own record company called Satellites Records, and later returned to jazz-fusion in 1991.
April 14 - COVID-19 pandemic: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it expects the world economy to shrink 3%, the worst contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
April 14 - U.S. president Donald Trump announces that the U.S. will suspend funding towards the World Health Organization (WHO) pending an investigation of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its relationship with China.
April 14 – COVID-19 pandemic: President Trump announces that he will suspend U.S. funding of the World Health Organization (WHO) pending an investigation into its early response to the outbreak.
April 15 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 2 million worldwide.
April 15 - COVID-19 pandemic: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer faces two federal lawsuits accusing her of violating constitutional rights during the state's containment efforts.  Thousands of people attend a protest in Lansing as anti-lockdown sentiment spreads.
April 15 - Brian Dennehy, American actor, dies at age 81 of cardiac arrest due to sepsis.  Dennehy had roles in over 180 films and in many television and stage productions. His film roles included First Blood (1982), Gorky Park (1983), Silverado (1985), Cocoon (1985), F/X (1986), Presumed Innocent (1990), Romeo + Juliet (1996), and Knight of Cups (2015). Dennehy won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film for his role as Willy Loman in the television film Death of a Salesman (2000).  According to Variety, Dennehy was "perhaps the foremost living interpreter" of playwright Eugene O'Neill’s works on stage and screen. He had a decades long relationship with Chicago's Goodman Theatre where much of his O'Neill work originated.  He also regularly played Canada's Stratford Festival, especially in works by William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett.  He once gave credit for his award-winning performances to the play's authors: "When you walk with giants, you learn how to take bigger steps."  Dennehy was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010.
April 16 - COVID-19 pandemic: It is revealed that nearly 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment within a single month due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression.
April 16 - The Trump administration reveals federal guidelines outlining a three-phased, gradual reopening of schools, commerce, and services for parts of the country.
April 16 - Gene Deitch, American-Czech animator and film director, dies at age 95 from intestinal problems.  Based in Prague after 1959, Deitch was known for creating animated cartoons such as Munro, Tom Terrific, and Nudnik, as well as his work on the Popeye and Tom and Jerry series.  The 2021 Tom and Jerry film will be dedicated to his memory.
April 17 - The China Securities Regulatory Commission approves a transaction in which Switzerland's Credit Suisse will take a majority interest in a China securities firm, making Credit Suisse the first foreign bank to own a majority of such a company since the easing of foreign ownership rules in 2018.
April 17 - COVID-19 pandemic: China revises the COVID-19 death toll in Wuhan upward, adding 1,290 more fatalities to bring the country's reported COVID-19 deaths to 4,632.
April 17 - Europe surpasses 100,000 COVID-19-related deaths.
April 17 - The U.N. Human Rights Office accuses Myanmar of carrying out daily airstrikes in the Rakhine and Chin states and that at least 32 civilians have been killed since March 23. The separatist Arakan Army unilaterally declared a month-long ceasefire to fight the pandemic, but the military rejected the ceasefire claiming a previous ceasefire had been reneged by the insurgents.
April 17 – COVID-19 pandemic: Texas is the first state to begin easing coronavirus-related restrictions.  Florida's Duval County is the first in the state to ease restrictions, with Jacksonville, Atlantic, and Neptune being the first beaches in the state to reopen, on a limited basis.
April 18 – 44 suspected Boko Haram members are found dead, apparently due to poisoning, inside a prison in N'Djamena, Chad.
April 19 - Vietnam condemns China's prior decision to establish administrative districts in the disputed Paracel and Spratly Islands as a violation of its sovereignty.
April 19 - COVID-19 pandemic: Unrest breaks out in Paris, Berlin and Vladikavkaz as opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns continue.
April 20 - Oil prices reach a record low, with West Texas Intermediate falling into negative values.
April 20 - The Industrial Bank of Korea agrees to pay $86 million and will enter a two-year deferred prosecution agreement to settle lawsuits with the U.S. Department of Justice and the state of New York over a 2011 scheme to help transfer $1 billion to Iran.
April 20 - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White Alliance leader Benny Gantz agree on a deal to form a unity government, thus ending more than a year of political deadlock. As part of the deal, Netanyahu will hold onto his position for 18 more months, with Gantz replacing him afterwards.
April 21 – Mozambique police say 52 male villagers were killed by Islamist militants earlier this month in Muidumbe District, Cabo Delgado Province, after they refused to join their ranks.
April 21 - COVID-19 pandemic: The state of Missouri challenges China's sovereign immunity in U.S. district court by suing three Chinese government ministries, two local governments, two laboratories and the Chinese Communist Party over its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.
April 22 – Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps deploys the country's first military satellite, using a new satellite carrier called "Ghased" ("Messenger").
April 22 – COVID-19 pandemic: President Trump signs an immigration executive order halting the issuance of certain green cards for 60 days.
April 22 - Hartwig Gauder, German Olympic champion, dies at age 65 from a heart attack and kidney failure.  He was a race walker who won a gold medal in the Men's 50 kilometers walk at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.  Born in West Germany, his family moved to East Germany in 1960 when they inherited property at Ilmenau. Gauder thus competed for East Germany.  In 1996 Gauder started suffering from a virus infection of his heart. After living with an artificial heart for several months, he received a heart transplant. He subsequently took part in the New York Marathon several times. Being classified as a disabled participant due to his transplant, he was once disqualified for being too fast as there was a minimum time, which he underran.  His recovery from almost dying to returning into a normal life was covered in a documentary shown on German documentary channel Phoenix.
April 22 - Shirley Knight, American actress, dies at age 83 of natural causes.  She appeared in more than 50 feature films, television films, television series, and Broadway and Off-Broadway productions in her career, playing leading and character roles. She was a member of the Actors Studio.  Knight was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress: for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1962).  In 1976, Knight won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Kennedy's Children, a play by Robert Patrick. In later years, she played supporting roles in many films, including Endless Love (1981), As Good as It Gets (1997), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002), and Grandma's Boy (2006). For her performances on television, Knight was nominated eight times for a Primetime Emmy Award (winning three), and she received a Golden Globe Award.
April 23 - Syrian Civil War: Two former high-ranking members of the Syrian Army go on trial in Koblenz, Germany, for alleged war crimes committed during the civil war. It is the first time that Syrian military officials are prosecuted for their roles in the conflict.
April 23 - COVID-19 pandemic: Facebook removes "pseudoscience" and "conspiracy theory" as options for targeted ads as criticism mounts against social media for its role in spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
April 24 - President Trump signs a $483 billion bill to rescue small businesses.
April 25 - Yemeni Civil War: The Southern Transitional Council (STC) announces the establishment of a self-rule administration in southern Yemen and deploys forces in Aden.  Governors of multiple southern Yemeni Governorates and Socotra island reject the STC's claim to self-rule and declare their loyalty to President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.  Months later on July 19, the STC accepts a Saudi-brokered peace deal and abandons its self-rule aspirations.
April 25 - COVID-19 pandemic: The global death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 200,000.  The UK becomes the fifth country to report 20,000 deaths.
April 26 – King Salman issues a royal decree, declaring that people will no longer be executed in Saudi Arabia for crimes they were convicted of when they were minors.
April 27 - The Pentagon formally releases three videos (previously leaked by Luis Elizondo in 2017) of "unidentified aerial phenomena" encountered by U.S. Navy pilots.
April 27 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases passes 3 million worldwide, while the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. passes 1 million.
April 27 – Dragutin Zelenović, 1st Prime Minister of Serbia, dies at age 91 several years after suffering a stroke.  He also served as a Member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1991.
April 28 - A fast radio burst is detected from the Magnetar SGR 1935+2154, the first ever detected inside the Milky Way, and the first to be linked to a known source.
April 28 - Colombia formalizes its membership with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), becoming the 37th nation of the organization.
April 28 - The Indian Ministry of External Affairs condemns the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom after its annual report recommends placing India on the "countries of particular concern" blacklist over the Citizenship Amendment Act, the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir's special status, and controversial comments made by Home Minister Amit Shah, among others.
April 29 – (52768) 1998 OR2, a near-Earth asteroid that is 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) wide, makes a close approach of 0.042 AU (6.3 million km; 16 LD) to Earth. It will not approach closer than this until 2079.
April 29 – The Department of Commerce reports that the U.S. economy shrank by 4.8% in the first quarter of 2020, its most severe contraction since 2008.
April 29 - Denis Goldberg, South African social campaigner, dies at age 87 from lung cancer.  He was active in the struggle against apartheid and was accused No. 3 in the Rivonia Trial, alongside the better-known Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, where he was also the youngest of the defendants. He was imprisoned for 22 years, along with other key members of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. After his release in 1985 he continued to campaign against apartheid from his base in London with his family, until the apartheid system was fully abolished with the 1994 election. He returned to South Africa in 2002 and founded the non-profit Denis Goldberg Legacy Foundation Trust in 2015.
April 29 - Yahya Hassan, Danish poet and political activist, dies at age 24.  Hassan was found dead in his apartment and the police do not believe it to be a criminal act.  He was of Palestinian descent and his poems and public statements criticized both Islam and Danish policies on migration and participation in armed conflicts, which made him a much-debated and controversial figure.  His most notable work, Yahya Hassan, as of 2013 was the best-selling debut poetry collection in Denmark, and has been printed in more than 120,000 copies (middle of 2015).
April 29 - Irrfan Khan, Indian actor, dies at age 53 from a colon infection.  He had roles in Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), Life of Pi (2012), Jurassic World (2015), and Inferno (2016).  As of 2017, his films had grossed $3.643 billion at the worldwide box office.
April 29 - Jānis Lūsis, Latvian Olympic champion, dies at age 80.  He competed in four Summer Olympics for the USSR team, winning bronze in 1964 Olympics, gold in 1968 Olympics and silver in 1972 Olympics.  The javelin competition at the 1972 Games was the closest in Olympic history.  As of 2020, he remains the only Latvian to have won an all three classes of Olympic medals (gold, silver and bronze) over the span of his career. Lūsis set two world records in javelin throw, of 91.68 m in 1968 and of 93.80 m in 1972. He is also a 4-time European champion. In 1987 IAAF named him the greatest javelin thrower in history.  After Lūsis finished competing, he became an athletics coach. He was married to Elvīra Ozoliņa, the 1960 Olympic female champion in the javelin throw. Their son, Voldemārs Lūsis, is also a javelin thrower who competed in 2000 Summer Olympics and 2004 Summer Olympics.
April 29 - Giacomo dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, 80th Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, dies at age 75 from throat cancer.  Born in Rome to a noble family with extensive ties to the Vatican, he completed his studies at the Sapienza University of Rome and taught at the Pontifical Urban University. He joined the Order in 1985 and took full vows in 1993 to become a Knight of Justice.
April 30 - NASA officially selects SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics to build its next-generation lunar lander to carry American astronauts to the Moon by 2024.
April 30 - Bulgaria applies for ERM II (the "waiting room" for the Eurozone), due to join along with Croatia in July 2020.
April 30 - COVID-19 pandemic: Armed protesters enter Michigan's State Capitol building to demand an end to lockdown measures.

May 1 – COVID-19 pandemic: The total number of recovered COVID-19 patients reaches 1 million worldwide, according to data from The Johns Hopkins University.
May 1 – COVID-19 pandemic: The FDA authorizes emergency remdesivir use to treat the sickest COVID-19 patients.
May 3 – The United States faces an invasion of Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia magnifica), threatening domestic bees.
May 3–4 – Venezuelan dissidents and an American-based private military company, Silvercorp USA, unsuccessfully attempt to infiltrate Venezuela and forcibly remove President Nicolás Maduro from office.
May 4 – A team of British and Kenyan scientists announce the discovery of Microsporidia MB, a parasitic microbe in the Microsporidia fungi group that blocks mosquitos from carrying malaria, potentially paving the way for the control of malaria.
May 5 - COVID-19 pandemic: The U.K. death toll from COVID-19 becomes the highest in Europe at 32,313 after exceeding the death toll of 29,029 in Italy.
May 5 - The Philippines' National Telecommunications Commission issues a cease-and-desist order to the broadcasting operations of ABS-CBN, the country's largest media network, as Congress fails to renew its franchise granted on March 30, 1995.  The last time the network was shut down was upon the declaration of martial law by the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1972.  On July 10, Members of the Philippine House Committee on Legislative Franchises vote against the franchise renewal of the said network.
May 6 - Astronomers announce the discovery of the first black hole located in a star system visible to the naked eye.
May 6 - COVID-19 pandemic: New evidence indicates that an Algerian-born French fishmonger, who had not traveled to China and did not have contact with any Chinese nationals, was treated for pneumonia from an unknown source on December 27, 2019, now identified as COVID-19.
May 7 – The Department of Justice drops charges against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in the Mueller investigation.  On May 11, nearly 2,000 former Justice Department officials sign a letter calling for Attorney General William Barr to resign over what they describe as his improper intervention in the Flynn case.
May 8 – Roy Horn, German-American magician, dies at age 75 from COVID-19.  He was part of the Siegfried & Roy team and they were best known for their appearances with white lions and white tigers.  In 2003 Horn was attacked by a tiger that severed his spine.
May 9 – Several Chinese and Indian soldiers are injured in a cross-border clash at the Nathu La crossing. About 150 troops participated in the face-off, which involved fistfights and stone-throwing.
May 9 – Little Richard, American musician, dies at age 87 from bone cancer.  He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Nicknamed "The Innovator, The Originator, and The Architect of Rock and Roll," Richard's most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his charismatic showmanship and dynamic music, characterized by frenetic piano playing, pounding back beat and raspy shouted vocals, laid the foundation for rock and roll.
May 10 - The Iranian Navy frigate Jamaran accidentally strikes the Iranian support vessel Konarak with a missile, killing nineteen sailors. This is the first friendly fire incident since February 2019, when an Indian Mil Mi-17 helicopter was mistakenly shot down by Indian air defense forces.
May 10 - COVID-19 pandemic: Wuhan reports its first coronavirus cases in more than a month. An 89-year-old man is confirmed positive, but his wife and several members of the community are recorded as asymptomatic cases.
May 10 – Prince Charles of Luxembourg is born.  He is the first child of Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume (age 39) and Hereditary Grand Duchess Stéphanie (age 36).
May 11 – The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology publishes the result of radiocarbon and DNA analysis from the fossils that has been found in the Bacho Kiro cave, Bulgaria. The result, showing that the fossils belong to Homo sapiens instead of Neanderthal, indicates that modern humans may have arrived in Europe thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
May 11 – Jerry Stiller, American comedian, dies at age 92 from natural causes.  He starred in Seinfeld and The King of Queens.  Stiller is the father of actor Ben Stiller, and the father and son appeared together in films such as Zoolander, Heavyweights, Hot Pursuit, The Heartbreak Kid, and Zoolander 2. He also performed voice-over work for television and films including The Lion King 1½ and Planes: Fire and Rescue. In his later career, Stiller became known for playing grumpy and eccentric characters who were nevertheless beloved.
May 12 – Gunmen storm a maternity hospital and kill 24 people, including two newborn babies, in Dashte Barchi, a majority-Shia neighborhood of Kabul, Afghanistan. In a separate incident in Kuz Kunar, 32 people are killed at a funeral by a suicide bomber.
May 12 - Astrid Kirchherr, German photographer and artist, dies at age 81 after short but serious illness.  She was known for her association with the Beatles (along with her friends Klaus Voormann and Jürgen Vollmer) and her photographs of the band's original members – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best – during their early days in Hamburg.  Kirchherr met artist Stuart Sutcliffe in the Kaiserkeller bar in Hamburg in 1960, where Sutcliffe was playing bass with the Beatles, and was later engaged to him, before his death in 1962. Although Kirchherr shot very few photographs after 1967, her early work has been exhibited in Hamburg, Bremen, London, Liverpool, New York City, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Vienna and at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. She published three limited-edition books of photographs.
May 13 - Rolf Hochhuth, German author and playwright, dies at age 89.  He was best known for his 1963 drama The Deputy, which insinuates Pope Pius XII's indifference to Hitler's extermination of the Jews, and he remained a controversial figure both for his plays and other public comments and for his 2005 defense of British Holocaust denier David Irving.
May 14 - COVID-19 pandemic: The global death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 300,000.
May 14 - The UN warns of a global mental health crisis caused by isolation, fear, uncertainty and economic turmoil.
May 14 - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the military alliance is "ready to support" the UN-recognized Government of National Accord in Libya while Greece, a member state of NATO, strongly criticizes Stoltenberg's remarks, saying his recognition of the "Muslim Brotherhood government" does not reflect the positions of the military alliance.
May 15 – Researchers announce a 2.5 cm millipede fossil belonging to the Kampecaris genus, discovered on the island of Kerrera in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, is the world's oldest-known land animal, which lived 425 million years ago in the Silurian period.
May 15 - COVID-19 pandemic: The Trump administration formally announces Operation Warp Speed, a public–private partnership for accelerating the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
May 15 - Fred Willard, American actor and comedian, dies at age 86 from cardiac arrest.  He was best known for his roles in the Rob Reiner mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap; the Christopher Guest mockumentaries Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration, and Mascots; and the Anchorman films.
May 16 - COVID-19 pandemic: Bundesliga (a German soccer league) becomes the first major sports league to resume its season since March 11.
May 16 - Félicien Kabuga, a Rwandan businessman responsible for supporting the Rwandan genocide, is arrested in Asnières-sur-Seine, France, after 26 years as a fugitive.
May 18 - The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announces that nearly 1 million people are affected and at least 24 people have died in flash floods that have hit Beledweyne and Jowhar, Somalia.
May 18 - In a historic move, the World Health Organization holds its annual World Health Assembly using video conferencing instead of in-person meetings.
May 18 – The FBI confirms that the 2019 Naval Air Station Pensacola shooting was the first terrorist attack on U.S. territory that had been directed by a foreign actor since 9/11.
May 19 – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announces the termination of all agreements, including security ones, with Israel and the United States in response to Israel's plans to annex the Jordan Valley.
May 19 - Two dams in Midland County, Michigan, fail, resulting in extensive evacuations and the declaration of a state of emergency.
May 19 – Ravi Zacharias, Indian-born Canadian-American Christian apologist, dies at age 74 from a rare cancer in his spine.  He was a lifelong minister of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Keswickian Christian denomination in which he was ordained.[6] Zacharias has been accused of exaggerating his academic qualifications and multiple sources accuse Zacharias of sexual misconduct.  Following his death, a number of high-profile Christians posted messages online detailing Zacharias's influence upon them.  White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany as well as U.S. Vice President Mike Pence expressed their sympathies for Zacharias following his death.
May 20 – COVID-19 pandemic: James Jamal Curry, 31, who spat and coughed on a police officer in Miami, Florida after claiming to have COVID-19, is indicted for committing a biological weapon hoax (terrorism).
May 21 - Cyclone Amphan makes landfall in eastern India and Bangladesh, killing over 100 people and forcing the evacuation of more than 4 million others. It causes over $13 billion in damage, making it the costliest cyclone ever recorded in the North Indian Ocean, shattering the record previously held by Nargis.
May 21 - The U.S. announces it will withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty within six months, alleging continuous violations by Russia.
May 21 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 5 million worldwide, with 106,000 new cases recorded over the past 24 hours, the highest single-day figure so far.
May 22 - Flight PK8303, a Pakistan International Airlines passenger aircraft, crashes in a residential area near Karachi, in Pakistan, killing 97 of the 99-total people on board and injuring dozens on the ground.
May 22 - COVID-19 pandemic: Brazil overtakes Russia to become the country with the second highest number of COVID-19 cases, with over 330,000 reported. President Jair Bolsonaro continues to dismiss the threat of the virus.
May 22 - Ashley Cooper, Australian tennis player, dies at age 83 following a long illness.  He was recognized as the world's best amateur player during the years of 1957 and 1958.  Cooper won four singles and four doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments. He won three of the four Grand Slam events in 1958. He turned professional in 1959.
May 22 - Jerry Sloan, American basketball player and head coach, dies at age 78 with Parkinson's disease and Lewy body dementia.  He played 11 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) before beginning a 30-year coaching career, 23 of which were spent as head coach of the Utah Jazz (1988–2011). NBA commissioner David Stern referred to Sloan as "one of the greatest and most respected coaches in NBA history".  Sloan was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.  Nicknamed "the Original Bull", he was a two-time NBA All-Star and the first player to have his number retired by the Bulls. Sloan then became a coach, and had a career regular-season win–loss record of 1,221–803, placing him third all-time in NBA wins at the time he retired.  He was the fifth coach to reach 1,000 NBA victories and is one of two coaches in NBA history to record 1,000 wins with one club (the Utah Jazz). Sloan coached the Jazz to 15 consecutive playoff appearances from 1989 to 2003. He is one of only four coaches in NBA history with 15-plus consecutive seasons that have a winning record.  He led Utah to the NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998, but lost to Chicago both times.  After Tom Kelly stepped down as manager of the Minnesota Twins in Major League Baseball in 2001, Sloan became the longest-tenured head coach in American major league sports with their current franchise. He resigned mid-season from the Jazz in 2011 before returning in 2013 as an adviser and scouting consultant.
May 23 – COVID-19 pandemic: China reports no new cases for the first time since the pandemic began, according to the National Health Commission.
May 24 - Mining corporation Rio Tinto admits to blowing up the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge caves in the Pilbara area of Western Australia. The firm later issues an apology to the two Aboriginal peoples who are the traditional owners of the site.
May 24 - A "once in a decade" storm batters 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) of the coast of Western Australia.
May 24 - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pardons 3,157 prisoners to celebrate Eid al-Fitr and, two days later, President of Zambia Edgar Lungu pardons nearly 3,000 inmates to commemorate Africa Freedom Day.
May 24 – Jimmy Cobb, American jazz drummer, dies at age 91 from lung cancer.  He was part of Miles Davis's First Great Sextet. At the time of his death, he had been the band's last surviving member for nearly thirty years. He was awarded an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship in 2009.
May 25 - Hyun Soong-jong, 22nd Prime Minister of South Korea, dies at age 101.  At the time of his death, he was the eldest known living former state leader.
May 25 - Balbir Singh Sr., Indian field hockey player and manager, dies at age 96.  He was a three-time Olympic gold medalist, having played a key role in India's wins in London (1948), Helsinki (1952) (as vice-captain), and Melbourne (1956) (as captain) Olympics.  He is regarded as one of the greatest hockey players of all time, a modern-day Dhyan Chand, a legend of the sport and is widely regarded as the sport's greatest ever center-forward.  His Olympic record for most goals scored by an individual in an Olympic men's hockey final remains unbeaten.  Singh set this record when he scored five goals in India's 6–1 victory over the Netherlands in the gold medal game of the 1952 Olympic Games. He was often called Balbir Singh Senior to distinguish him from other Indian hockey players named Balbir Singh.  He was the manager and chief coach of the Indian team for the 1975 Men's Hockey World Cup, which India won, and the 1971 Men's Hockey World Cup, where India earned a bronze medal.
May 26 - Protests caused by the killing of George Floyd break out across hundreds of cities in the U.S. and around the world.  These are followed by further protests and rallies on June 6 against racism and police brutality around the world.
May 26 - Costa Rica becomes the first Central American country to legalize same-sex marriage.
May 26 - LATAM Airlines, the largest air carrier in Latin America, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
May 26 – Stanley Ho, Hong Kong-Macau business magnate, investor and philanthropist, dies at age 98; his health deteriorated following a stroke in 2009.  He was the founder and chairman of SJM Holdings, which owns nineteen casinos in Macau including the Grand Lisboa.  Ho had been nicknamed variously Godfather and King of Gambling, reflecting the government-granted monopoly he held on the Macau gambling industry for 75 years. His wealth was divided among his daughter, Pansy Ho ($5.3 billion) who owns MGM Macau, fourth wife Angela Leong ($4.1 billion) who is managing director of SJM Holdings, and son Lawrence Ho ($2.6 billion) who owns City of Dreams.  His paternal great-grandfather, Charles Henry Maurice Bosman (1839–1892) was of Dutch Jewish ancestry.
May 27 - The Chinese National People's Congress votes in favor of national security legislation that criminalizes "secession", "subversion", "terrorism" and foreign interference in Hong Kong; the legislation grants sweeping powers to the Chinese central government to suppress the Hong Kong democracy movement, including banning activist groups and curtailing civil liberties.  The U.S. government responds by declaring Hong Kong is "no longer autonomous" under the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act.
May 27 - COVID-19 pandemic: The U.S. death toll passes 100,000 – more Americans than were killed in the Vietnam War and Korean War combined, and approaching that of the First World War, where 116,000 Americans died in combat.  The total number of cases continues to rise, although the rate is slowing.
May 30 – The first crewed flight of the SpaceX Dragon 2 (initially scheduled for May 27 but delayed due to weather) is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first manned spacecraft to take off from U.S. soil since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011.
May 30 - Bobby Morrow, American athlete, dies at age 84 of natural causes.  He was a sprinter who won three gold medals at the 1956 Olympics. He has been called "the dominant sprinter of the 1950s" and "the most relaxed sprinter of all time, even more so than his hero Jesse Owens".

June 1 – Kivu Ebola epidemic: The World Health Organization reports six new cases of Ebola, and UNICEF reports five deaths, in a renewed outbreak of the disease in Mbandaka, Équateur Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
June 2 – A $5 billion class action lawsuit is filed against Alphabet Inc. and Google, alleging the company violates users' right to privacy by tracking them in Chrome's incognito mode.
June 2 - Mary Pat Gleason, American actress, dies at age 70 of cancer.  From 1983 to 1985, she appeared as "Jane Hogan" on the daytime soap opera, Guiding Light, for which she was also a writer.
June 2 - Carlo Ubbiali, Italian motorcycle road racer, dies at age 90.  He was a nine-time World Champion.  In the 1950s, he was a dominant force in the smaller classes of Grand Prix motorcycle racing, winning six 125cc and three 250cc world titles.  He was the last surviving rider from the first season of Grand Prix motorcycle racing.
June 2 - Wes Unseld, American basketball player and coach, dies at age 74 from pneumonia.  He spent his entire National Basketball Association (NBA) career with the Baltimore/Capital/Washington Bullets. Unseld played college basketball for the Louisville Cardinals and was selected with the second overall pick by the Bullets in the 1968 NBA draft. He was named the NBA Most Valuable Player during his rookie season and joined Wilt Chamberlain as the only two players in NBA history to accomplish the feat. Unseld won an NBA championship with the Bullets in 1978. After retiring from playing in 1981, he worked with the Bullets/Wizards as a vice president, head coach and general manager.  Unseld was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.
June 3 - Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the UK will change immigration laws to offer a pathway to UK citizenship for all Hong Kong citizens who are eligible for BN(O) status if the government of China imposes new security laws on the territory.
June 3 - SpaceX successfully launches and deploys 60 Starlink satellites into a low Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, bringing the total number of Starlink satellites in orbit to 482.
June 3 - Russian President Vladimir Putin declares a state of emergency after 20,000 tons of oil leaked into the Ambarnaya River near the Siberian city of Norilsk within the Arctic Circle on May 26, 2020. The World Wildlife Fund said the accident is believed to be the second-largest in modern Russian history.
June 4 - Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) says they are in full control of the capital, Tripoli, after forces of the Libyan National Army (LNA) retreat from the territory following months of intense fighting in the city.
June 4 - Hong Kong legislative council passed the controversial National Anthem Ordinance, intended to criminalize "insults to the national anthem of China" ("March of the Volunteers").
June 4 – Pete Rademacher, American Olympic heavyweight boxing champion, dies at age 91.  A gold medalist at the 1956 Olympics, he became the only person to challenge for the world heavyweight championship in his first professional bout when he faced Floyd Patterson in Seattle on August 22, 1957.  A former college football player at Washington State, Rademacher took up boxing as a form of rehabilitation during his recovery from rheumatic fever, which he contracted in military school.
June 7 – COVID-19 pandemic: The global death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 400,000.
June 8 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 7 million worldwide.
June 9 – COVID-19 pandemic: A Harvard University study suggests that COVID-19 may have been spreading in China as early as August 2019, based on hospital car park usage and web search trends.
June 9 - Ödön Földessy, Hungarian long jumper, dies at age 90.  He competed for Hungary in the men's long jump event at the 1952 Summer Olympics held in Helsinki, Finland, where he won the bronze medal.
June 11 - Dennis O'Neil, American comic book writer, dies at age 81 of cardiopulmonary arrest.  He worked for Marvel Comics and DC Comics from the 1960s through the 1990s, and was Group Editor for the Batman family of titles until his retirement.  His best-known works include Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman with Neal Adams. It was during this run that O'Neil co-created the Batman villains Ra's al Ghul and Talia al Ghul.  The animated feature Batman: Soul of the Dragon was dedicated in his memory.
June 13 – Jean Raspail, French author and explorer, dies at age 94.  Many of his books are about historical figures, exploration and indigenous peoples. He was a recipient of the prestigious French literary awards Grand Prix du Roman and Grand Prix de littérature by the Académie française. Internationally, he is best known for his controversial 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints, which is about mass third-world immigration to Europe.
June 15 - At least 20 Indian soldiers and over 40 Chinese forces are killed or injured in skirmishes in the disputed Galwan Valley, the largest escalation along the Sino-Indian border in five decades.
June 15 - Turkish and Iranian forces commence air and artillery strikes against Kurdistan Workers' Party forces in Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey launches a land operation in the region on June 17.
June 16 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 8 million worldwide.
June 16 - North Korea demolishes the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong, established in 2018 to improve relations.
June 17 - Marlene Ahrens, Chilean athlete, dies at age 86 of heart failure.  She won the silver medal in Javelin throw at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne with a distance of 50.38 meters.  In Melbourne, she was the Chilean flag bearer, and the only woman on the Olympic team.  She became the first and only Chilean woman who has won an Olympic medal. After the games, she won gold in both 1959 Pan American Games, held in Chicago, and 1963 Pan American Games held in São Paulo. Also, she again was the flag bearer in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, although she didn't win a medal. Ahrens was forced to retire after having a dispute with the Chilean newspaper Clarín, and she was banned from competing in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.  After athletics she began to play tennis and in 1967, won the Chilean national tournament in mixed doubles with Omar Pabst. Soon after that, she injured her knee and dedicated her life to Equestrianism. She competed in the 1995 Pan American Games in Mar del Plata. She retired from horse riding in 2012, at 79 years old.
June 17 - György Kárpáti, Hungarian water polo player, dies at age 84 after a long illness.  He competed in the 1952 Summer Olympics, 1956 Summer Olympics, 1960 Summer Olympics, and 1964 Summer Olympics. He is one of eight male athletes who won four or more Olympic medals in water polo, and one of ten male athletes who won three Olympic gold medals in water polo.
June 18 - Tibor Benedek, Hungarian water polo player, dies at age 47 due to pancreatic cancer.  He played on the gold medal squads at the 2000 Summer Olympics, 2004 Summer Olympics and 2008 Summer Olympics. Benedek also competed at the 1992 and 1996 Summer Olympics, where the Hungarian team placed 6th and 4th, respectively. He was a member of team Domino-Honvéd.  Benedek was the head coach of Hungary men's national water polo team between 2013 and 2016.  He was named Hungarian Water Polo Player of the Year in 1992, 1993 and 1994. He made his debut for the national side in 1990. His father, Miklós Benedek, is a famous actor.  Widely regarded as one of the greatest water polo players of all time, Benedek ranks second on the all-time scoring list in Olympic history, with 65 goals. He was the joint top goal scorer at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, with 22 goals, and the top goal scorer at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, with 19 goals. Benedek is the ninth player to compete in water polo at five Olympics, and one of ten male athletes who won three Olympic gold medals in water polo.  In 2016, he was inducted in the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
June 18 - Vera Lynn, English singer, dies at age 103.  Her musical recordings and performances were very popular during the Second World War. She was widely referred to as the "Forces' Sweetheart" and gave outdoor concerts for the troops in Egypt, India and Burma during the war as part of Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA).  She remained popular after the war, appearing on radio and television in the United Kingdom and the United States.  Her last single, "I Love This Land", was released to mark the end of the Falklands War. In 2009, at the age of 92, she became the oldest living artist to top the UK Albums Chart with the compilation album We'll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn.  In 2014, she released the collection Vera Lynn: National Treasure and in 2017, she released Vera Lynn 100, a compilation album of hits to commemorate her centenary—it was a No. 3 hit, making her the first centenarian performer to have a Top 10 album in the charts.  By the time of her death in 2020 she had been active in the music industry for 96 years.
June 19 - Ian Holm, English actor, dies at age 88 from Parkinson's disease.  He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear. He won the 1981 BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his role as athletics trainer Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire, for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award.  His other well-known film roles include Ash in Alien, Father Vito Cornelius in The Fifth Element, Chef Skinner in Ratatouille, and Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series.
June 20 – Ema Derossi-Bjelajac, 6th President of the Presidency of the SR of Croatia, dies at age 94.  She was the first woman to hold a title equivalent to a head of state in modern-day Croatia.
June 21 – An annular (ring-shaped) solar eclipse occurs.
June 21 - Zeev Sternhell, Polish-born Israeli historian and political scientist, dies at age 85 due to complications from a medical surgery.  He was one of the world's leading theorists of the phenomenon of fascism.  Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote for Haaretz newspaper.  Sternhell considered fascism, in its ideological form, to be a synthesis of anti-materialist socialism and nationalism.  On September 25, 2008, Sternhell was the victim of a pipe bomb attack at his home, and was injured in the leg and hospitalized.
June 22 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 9 million worldwide.
June 22 – Joel Schumacher, American film director, dies at age 80 from cancer.  He was a director for St. Elmo's Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners, The Client, Batman Forever, A Time to Kill, Batman & Robin, Phone Booth, The Phantom of the Opera, The Number 23, and Trespass.
June 23 – A 7.5-magnitude earthquake strikes the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico and kills at least four people. It is felt more than 640 kilometers (400 miles) away in Mexico City.
June 26 - Kelly Asbury, American film director and animator, dies at age 60 of abdominal cancer.  He was best known for directing animated films, including Shrek 2, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Gnomeo & Juliet.
June 26 - Milton Glaser, American graphic designer, dies at age 91 of a stroke and renal failure on his birthday.  His designs include the I Love New York logo, the psychedelic Bob Dylan poster, and the logos for DC Comics, Stony Brook University, and Brooklyn Brewery.  He received many awards for his work, including the National Medal of the Arts award from President Barack Obama in 2009, and was the first graphic designer to receive this award.
June 27 - Freddy Cole, American jazz singer and pianist, dies at age 88.  His recording career spanned almost 70 years. He was the brother of musicians Nat King Cole, Eddie Cole, and Ike Cole, father of Lionel Cole, and uncle of Natalie Cole and Carole Cole.
June 28 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 10 million worldwide.  The U.S. continues to report the highest number of any country as it reaches 2.5 million, a quarter of all cases globally.  The global death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 500,000.
June 29 - Johnny Mandel, American composer, dies at age 94 from a heart ailment.  The musicians he worked with include Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Diane Schuur and Shirley Horn. He won 5 Grammy Awards - from 17 nominations; his first nomination was for his debut film score for the multi-nominated 1958 film I Want to Live!.  His mother had aimed to be an opera singer and discovered her son had perfect pitch at the age of five.  His family was Jewish.  They moved to Los Angeles in 1934, after his father's business collapsed during the Great Depression.  Mandel was given piano lessons, but switched to the trumpet and later the trombone.
June 29 - Carl Reiner, American actor, film director and comedian, dies at age 98; he fell while leaving his TV room at around 10:00 p.m. and lost consciousness.  During the early years of television comedy from 1950 to 1957, he acted on and contributed sketch material for Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, starring Sid Caesar, writing alongside Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen. Reiner teamed up with Brooks and together they released several iconic comedy albums beginning with the 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks (1960). Reiner was best known as the creator and producer of, and a writer and actor on, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1965).  Reiner was the recipient of many awards and honors, including 11 Emmy Awards, one Grammy Award, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.  He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999.  He was the father of actor-director Rob Reiner, author Annie Reiner, and artist Lucas Reiner and the grandfather of Tracy Reiner.
June 30 – China passes the controversial Hong Kong national security law, allowing China to crack down on opposition to Beijing at home or abroad.
June 30 – Ida Haendel, Polish-born English violinist, dies at age 91 from kidney cancer.  Haendel was a child prodigy, her career spanning over seven decades. She also became an influential teacher.

July 1 – Russian voters back a constitutional amendment that, among other things, enables Vladimir Putin to seek two further six-year terms when his current term ends in 2024, potentially allowing him to remain in power until 2036.
July 3 - Saroj Khan, Indian choreographer, dies at age 71 of sudden cardiac arrest.  She was the first woman choreographer in Bollywood.  With a career spanning over forty years, she choreographed more than 3000 songs.
July 5 - Willi Holdorf, German athlete and Olympic champion, dies at age 80.  In 1964 he won the first Olympic medal for Germany in decathlon and was named German Sportspersonality of the Year. In 1997, he became a member of the German Olympic Committee, and in 2011 inducted into the German Sports Hall of Fame.  Holdorf was the German champion in 1961 and 1963 in decathlon, and in 1962 in the 200 m hurdles. He placed fifth in decathlon at the European Championships in 1962 and 1964.  Holdorf was the father of Dirk Holdorf, a former professional football player.
July 6 - Charlie Daniels, American country singer-songwriter and musician, dies at age 83 of a hemorrhagic stroke.  He was best known for his number-one country hit "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Much of his output, including all but one of his eight Billboard Hot 100 charting singles, was credited to the Charlie Daniels Band.  Daniels was an early supporter of Jimmy Carter's presidential bid and performed at his January 1977 inauguration.  An avid University of Tennessee sports fan, Daniels enjoyed hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, and other outdoor activities. He was a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and performed on their videos.
July 6 - Ennio Morricone, Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor, dies at age 91 as a result of injuries sustained during a fall.  With more than 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as more than 100 classical works, Morricone is widely considered as one of the most prolific and greatest film composers of all time.  His filmography includes more than 70 award-winning films.  His score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) is regarded as one of the most recognizable and influential soundtracks in history and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
July 7 - Protests begin throughout Bulgaria with the goal of removing Borisov's cabinet and Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev from office.
July 7 - COVID-19 pandemic: Thousands of people rally outside the House of the National Assembly of Serbia in Belgrade in response to stricter lockdown measures proposed by President Aleksandar Vučić following an increase of cases in the city.
July 8 – At least 180 bodies are found in mass graves in Djibo, Burkina Faso, where soldiers are fighting jihadists. It is suspected that government forces were involved in mass extrajudicial executions.
July 8 - Finn Christian Jagge, Norwegian alpine skier and Olympic champion, dies at age 54 after a short illness.  He was the son of alpine skier Liv Jagge-Christiansen and tennis player Finn Dag Jagge.  In the World Cup he won seven slalom victories.  He also won the Norwegian Championship eight times.  His career highlight came with the gold medal in the slalom competition at the 1992 Olympics in Albertville.  He retired in 2000.  He trained the Norwegian women ski team from 2005 to 2007.  Jagge won the Norwegian reality TV show Mesternes Mester in 2011.  He was married to Trine-Lise Jagge and had two children.
July 8 - Naya Rivera, American actress, model and singer, dies at age 33 from drowning.  She began her career as a child actress and model, appearing in national television commercials.  After a series of recurring television roles and then guest spots as a teenager, Rivera got her breakthrough role in 2009 as lesbian cheerleader Santana Lopez on the Fox television series Glee (2009–2015). For the role, she received critical acclaim and various awards, including a SAG Award and ALMA Award, as well as earning two Grammy Award and one Brit Award nominations.  Rivera was signed to Columbia Records as a solo musical artist in 2011 and – despite never releasing a studio album – released a single, "Sorry", in 2013. She won two ALMA Awards as a music artist.
July 9 - Park Won-soon, South Korean politician, dies at age 64 from suicide after his former secretary accused him of a sexual offense.  He was the longest-serving mayor of Seoul from 2011 until his death in July 2020. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected in 2011 and won re-election in 2014 and 2018.  Prior to being elected mayor, Park was a community and social justice activist. He was a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A noted political donor in Seoul, Park contributed to political organizations and think tanks that advocated for grassroots solutions towards social, educational, environmental, and political issues.
July 10 - The ECB accepts Bulgaria and Croatia into ERM II, a mandatory stage for countries wishing to adopt the euro. This is the currency union's first major expansion in half a decade.
July 10 - Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan orders the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to be reverted to a mosque following a supreme court annulment of a 1934 presidential decree that made it into a museum.
July 10 - Jack Charlton, English footballer and manager, dies at age 85 after suffering from lymphoma and dementia.  He was part of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup and managed the Republic of Ireland national team from 1986 to 1996 achieving two World Cup and one European Championship appearances. He spent his entire club career with Leeds United from 1950 to 1973, helping the club to the Second Division title (1963–64), First Division title (1968–69), FA Cup (1972), League Cup (1968), Charity Shield (1969), Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (1968 and 1971), as well as one other promotion from the Second Division (1955–56) and five second-place finishes in the First Division, two FA Cup final defeats and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup final defeat. His 629 league and 762 total competitive appearances are club records. He was the elder brother of former Manchester United forward Bobby Charlton, who was also a teammate in England's World Cup final victory. In 2006, Leeds United supporters voted Charlton into the club's greatest XI.
July 10 - Paik Sun-yup, South Korean military officer, dies at age 99.  Paik is known for his service during the Korean War and for being the first four-star general in the history of the South Korean military. His brother, Paik In-yeop, also served in the Republic of Korea Army during the Korean War, commanding the 17th Independent Regiment at the Battle of Ongjin and again in the Inchon Landings.  In 1925 the Paik family moved to Pyongyang where they lived under extremely poor conditions in a single, rented room. Unable to feed her family, Paik's mother attempted to take the children and commit family suicide by jumping from the Taedong River bridge but was dissuaded from doing so by her older sister.
July 10 - Lara van Ruijven, Dutch short track speed skater, dies at age 27 in France due to an autoimmune disease.  At the 2018 Winter Olympics, she was part of the Dutch 3000 metres relay team that won a bronze medal. She won gold at the World Championships one year later. By doing so, she became the first Dutch woman to win a world short track title at an individual event.
July 12 – China reports 141 dead or missing in floods since June; 28,000 homes have been damaged.
July 12 - Kelly Preston, American actress and model, dies at age 57 from breast cancer.  She appeared in more than 60 television and film productions, including Mischief (1985), Twins (1988), Jerry Maguire (1996), and For Love of the Game (1999). She was married to John Travolta, with whom she collaborated on the comedy film The Experts (1989) and the biographical film Gotti (2018). She also starred in the films SpaceCamp (1986), The Cat in the Hat (2003), What a Girl Wants (2003), Sky High (2005), and Old Dogs (2009).
July 13 - Grant Imahara, American electrical engineer, roboticist, and television host, dies at age 49 after suffering a ruptured intracranial aneurysm.  He was best known for his work on the television series MythBusters, on which he designed and built numerous robots and specialized in operating computers and electronics to test myths.  Imahara began his career at Lucasfilm, where he worked in the THX division as an engineer and in the Industrial Light & Magic division in visual effects. His work has been featured in films from franchises such as Star Wars, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, and Terminator. His first foray into television was on the robot combat series BattleBots, for which he designed and competed with his robot Deadblow and later returned as a judge. In 2005, Imahara joined the cast of Mythbusters as a member of the Build Team, appearing in over 200 episodes of the series until his departure in 2014. In 2010 he designed the animatronic 'robot skeleton' Geoff Peterson to serve as a sidekick on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. He starred in the 2016 Netflix series White Rabbit Project alongside his MythBusters co-stars Kari Byron and Tory Belleci.
July 15 – The Twitter accounts of prominent political figures, CEOs, and celebrities are hacked to promote a bitcoin scam.
July 17 - John Lewis, American civil rights leader and politician, dies at age 80 from stage IV pancreatic cancer.  He served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966.  Lewis was one of the "Big Six" leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington. He fulfilled many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States. In 1965, Lewis led the first of three Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In an incident which became known as Bloody Sunday, state troopers and police attacked the marchers, including Lewis.  Lewis also stood up for the injustice of other communities, including the Jewish community.  In the wake of the 2014 Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting Lewis stated: "It is deeply tragic that such senseless brutality should occur on the eve of Passover, the time when Jews all over the world remember their liberation from slavery in Egypt thousands of years ago."  Lewis was called a “hero,” a “mensch” and “a special gift to the Jewish community” by those who knew and interacted with him.  Lewis did not attend the 2001 inauguration of George W. Bush, nor the 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump, because he believed both elections were illegitimate.
July 19 – Flooding of the Brahmaputra River kills 189 and leaves 4 million homeless in India and Nepal.
July 19 - Nikolai Tanayev, 8th Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan, dies at age 74.  He was the first ethnic non-Asian Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan since independence in 1991.  He lived in exile in St. Petersburg.
July 21 – COVID-19 pandemic: European leaders agree to create a €750 billion ($858 billion) recovery fund to rebuild EU economies impacted by the pandemic.
July 22 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 15 million worldwide.
July 23 – Jean Brankart, Belgian racing cyclist, dies at age 90.  He was active from 1953 to 1960. In 1955, Brankart finished the 1955 Tour de France in second place, winning two stages.
July 24 - Ben Jipcho, Kenyan athlete, Olympic silver medallist, dies at age 77 of cancer.  He won the silver medal in the 3000 metres steeplechase at the 1972 Summer Olympics, behind teammate Kipchoge Keino.  Jipcho won the 5000 metres race in the 1973 All-Africa Games. He also won the gold medal in the 5000 m. and 3000 m. steeplechase, and the bronze medal in the 1500 metres at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Jipcho may be as well known for his role in Keino's victory over Jim Ryun in the high altitude 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City as for his own athletic accomplishments. Sacrificing his own chances for a medal to team tactics, he pulled Keino through a 56-second first 400 metres, before being passed by his teammate with 800 metres to go and drifting back into the pack. By that point, Keino had established a lead of 20 metres or more, which Ryun's famous finishing speed could not erase.  Jipcho later apologized to Ryun for acting as Keino's rabbit.  His granddaughter Esther Chemutai is also a runner, while he was a distant uncle to the siblings Linet Masai and Moses Masai.  He won the silver medal in the 3000m steeplechase at the 1970 Commonwealth Games held in Edinburgh, Scotland, finishing in front of fellow Kenyan competitor and the winner of the Gold Medal in the event at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Amos Biwott, who this time collected bronze.
July 24 - Regis Philbin, American talk show host, dies at age 88 from a heart attack due to coronary artery disease.  Once called "the hardest working man in show business", he holds the Guinness World Record for the most hours on U.S. television.  After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Philbin served in the U.S. Navy and got his television start serving as a page for The Tonight Show in the 1950s. He got his first network TV exposure in 1967 as Joey Bishop's sidekick on The Joey Bishop Show. He is most widely known as the co-host of the New York City-based nationally syndicated talk show Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee, starting in 1988, which became Live! with Regis and Kelly in 2001, and continued as Live! with Kelly after Philbin's departure in 2011.  Philbin debuted and hosted the US version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Million Dollar Password, and the first season of America's Got Talent.
July 25 – COVID-19 pandemic: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un convenes an emergency meeting, declares a state of emergency, and orders the lockdown of Kaesong after a person suspected of having COVID-19 returned from South Korea. If confirmed, it would be the first case to be officially acknowledged by North Korea.
July 25 - Peter Green, English blues rock singer-songwriter, dies at age 73.  As the founder of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Green's songs, such as "Albatross", "Black Magic Woman", "Oh Well", "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" and "Man of the World", appeared on singles charts, and several have been adapted by a variety of musicians.  Green was a major figure in the "second great epoch" of the British blues movement.
July 26 – Olivia de Havilland, British-American actress, dies at age 104 in Paris of natural causes in her sleep.  The major works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988.  She appeared in 49 feature films and was one of the leading actresses of her time. She was the last major surviving star from the Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema and the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner until her death in July 2020. Her younger sister was the actress Joan Fontaine.  She and her sister remain the only siblings to have won major acting Academy Awards.  De Havilland, as a confidante and friend of Bette Davis, is featured in the series Feud: Bette and Joan, portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones. In the series, de Havilland reflects on the origins and depth of the Davis–Crawford feud and how it affected contemporary female Hollywood stars. On June 30, 2017, a day before her 101st birthday, she filed a lawsuit against FX Networks and producer Ryan Murphy for inaccurately portraying her and using her likeness without permission.  Although FX attempted to strike the suit as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Holly Kendig denied the motion in September 2017, and also granted de Havilland's request to advance the trial date (a motion for preference) and set trial for November 2017.  A three-justice panel of the California Court of Appeal for the Second District ruled against the defamation suit brought by De Havilland (that is, by ruling the trial court erred in denying the defendants' motion to strike), in a published opinion by Justice Anne Egerton that affirmed the right of filmmakers to embellish the historical record and that such portrayals are protected by the First Amendment.  De Havilland appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in September 2018, which declined to review the case.
July 27 – Owen Arthur, 5th Prime Minister of Barbados, dies at age 70 from heart complications.  He was the longest-serving Barbadian Prime Minister at the time of his death.  He also served as Leader of the Opposition from August 1993 to September 1994 and from October 2010 to February 2013.  Arthur was a firm advocate for regional integration and cooperation among the countries of the Caribbean.  He was described by CARICOM as the chief architect of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy.  He argued in favor of making the Caribbean Court of Justice the final court of appeal for countries of the Caribbean, and he advocated for the University of the West Indies and regional airline LIAT.
July 30 – NASA successfully launches its Mars 2020 rover mission to search for signs of ancient life and collect samples for return to Earth. The mission includes technology demonstrations to prepare for future human missions.
July 30 – Lee Teng-hui, Taiwanese statesman and economist, dies at age 97 of multiple organ failure and septic shock.  He was the fourth president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) under the 1947 Constitution and chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) from 1988 to 2000. He was the first president of the Republic of China to be born in Taiwan and the first to be directly elected. During his presidency, Lee oversaw the end of martial law and the full democratization of the ROC, advocated the Taiwanese localization movement, and led an ambitious foreign policy to gain allies around the world. Nicknamed "Mr. Democracy", Lee was credited as the president who initiated Taiwan's transition to the democratic era.  After leaving office, he remained active in Taiwanese politics. Lee was considered the "spiritual leader" of the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), and recruited for the party in the past.  After Lee campaigned for TSU candidates in the 2001 Taiwanese legislative election, he was expelled by KMT. Other activities that Lee engaged in included maintaining relations with former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian and Japan.

August 1 – The Barakah nuclear power plant in the UAE becomes operational following delays since 2017. It is the first commercial nuclear power station in the Arab world.
August 1 – Wilford Brimley, American actor and singer, dies at age 85 after being ill with a kidney condition for two months.  After serving in the United States Marine Corps and taking on a variety of odd jobs, he became an extra for western films, and in little more than a decade he had established himself as a character actor in films such as The China Syndrome (1979), The Thing (1982), Tender Mercies (1983), The Natural (1984), and Cocoon (1985). He was the longtime face of television advertisements for the Quaker Oats Company.  He also promoted diabetes education and appeared in related commercials for Liberty Medical.
August 2 – COVID-19 pandemic: In rare talks, Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hold a video call to discuss various regional issues, including combating COVID-19 in their respective countries.
August 2 - Leon Fleisher, an American who was one of the most renowned pianists and pedagogues in the world, dies at age 92 of cancer.  In 1964, he lost the use of his right hand due to a neurological condition eventually diagnosed as focal dystonia, forcing him to focus on the repertoire for the left hand, such as Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and many compositions written for him. In 2004, he played the world premiere of Paul Hindemith's Klaviermusik, a piano concerto for the left hand completed in 1923, with the Berlin Philharmonic. He regained some control of his right hand then, and played and recorded two-hand repertoire.  He was also notable as a conductor, and especially as a teacher for over 60 years at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, the Curtis Institute of Music and others. He was a Kennedy Center Honors awardee in 2007, among many distinctions.
August 2 - Zhaksylyk Ushkempirov, Kazakh Olympic wrestling champion, dies at age 69.  He won an Olympic gold medal in 1980 and a world title in 1981.  Ushkempirov took up wrestling in 1969 and won the Soviet title in 1975 and 1980. After retiring from competitions, he worked as director of a sports school in Almaty in 1984–1993. In 1993 he founded the sports club Zhaksylyk and served as its president. Since 2001, an annual junior wrestling tournament has been held in Almaty in his honor.
August 4 – An explosion caused by unsafely stored ammonium nitrate kills over 220 people, injures thousands, and severely damages the port in Beirut, Lebanon. Damage is estimated at $10–15 billion, and an estimated 300,000 people are left homeless. The following day, the Lebanese government declares a two-week state of emergency.
August 5 – U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar travels to Taiwan, the highest U.S. official visit to the country in 40 years. The PRC condemns the visit.
August 7 – Air India Express Flight 1344 crashes after overrunning the runway at Calicut International Airport in Kerala, India, killing 19 of the 191 people on board.
August 9 – A presidential election in Belarus which led to incumbent Alexander Lukashenko's reelection sparks protests throughout the country after major opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya rejected the results. Seven days later, the largest political march in Belarusian history takes place, with an estimated 300,000 people in Minsk and 200,000 in other Belarusian cities and towns.
August 9 - Martin Birch, British music producer and engineer, dies at age 71.  He became renowned for engineering and producing albums recorded predominantly by British rock bands, including Deep Purple, Rainbow, Fleetwood Mac, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, and Iron Maiden.
August 10 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 20 million worldwide.
August 10 – Vladica Popović, Serbian footballer and manager, dies at age 85.  The biggest success in his coaching career was winning the Intercontinental Cup with Red Star Belgrade in 1991.  Popović began coaching football in Venezuela in the 1970s, leading Portuguesa FC, Caracas F.C. and Deportivo Italia. He also managed Colombian sides Deportivo Cali and Millonarios as well as the Peru national football team.
August 11 – COVID-19 pandemic: Russian President Vladimir Putin announces that Russia has approved the world's first COVID-19 vaccine.
August 11 - Trini Lopez, American singer and actor, dies at age 83 from COVID-19.  His first album included a cover version of "If I Had a Hammer", which earned a Golden Disc for him. His other hits included "Lemon Tree", "I'm Comin' Home, Cindy" and "Sally Was a Good Old Girl". He designed two guitars for the Gibson Guitar Corporation, which are now collectors’ items.
August 11 - Russell Kirsch, American computer scientist, dies at age 91 from dementia.  He was recognized as the developer of the first digital image scanner.  Although Kirsch did not work for NASA, his invention led to technology crucial to space exploration, including the Apollo moon landing. Medical advancements such as Sir Godfrey Hounsfield’s CAT scan can also be attributed to Kirsch's research.  Kirsch was married to Joan (née Levin) Kirsch for 65 years until his death. Together, they had four children.
August 13 – Israel and the UAE agree to normalize relations, marking the third Israel–Arab peace deal.
August 14 - Julian Bream, English classical guitarist and lutenist, dies at age 87.  Regarded as one of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century, he played a significant role in improving the public perception of the classical guitar as a respectable instrument. Over the course of a career that spanned more than half a century, Bream helped revive interest in the lute.
August 15 – The Japanese bulk carrier Wakashio, which stranded on a reef in Mauritius last month, breaks in half. Approximately 1,000 tons of oil are spilled into the ocean, becoming the largest environmental disaster in the history of Mauritius.
August 18 – A mutiny in a military base by soldiers of the Malian Armed Forces develops into a coup d'état. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and Prime Minister Boubou Cissé, among other senior governmental and military officers, are arrested. The next day, Keïta announces his resignation on state television.
August 18 - Dale Hawerchuk, Canadian ice hockey player, dies at age 57 from stomach cancer.  Drafted first overall by the Winnipeg Jets in the 1981 NHL Entry Draft, Hawerchuk played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for 16 seasons as a member of the Jets, Buffalo Sabres, St. Louis Blues and Philadelphia Flyers. He won the NHL's Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's Rookie of the Year in 1982 and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in his second year of eligibility in 2001. Hawerchuk served as the head coach of the Barrie Colts of the Ontario Hockey League from 2010 to 2019.
August 18 - Cesare Romiti, Italian manager and businessman, dies at age 97.  He was best known as an executive of both state-owned firms and private companies, including Fiat and Alitalia. He acquired the nickname Il Duro ("The tough guy") referring to his management style while he was serving as the head of Fiat.
August 19 – The Special Tribunal for Lebanon convicts in absentia Salim Ayyash, a senior member of Hezbollah, for the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.
August 22 – COVID-19 pandemic: The worldwide death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 800,000.
August 24 – Pascal Lissouba, 6th President and 2nd Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, dies at age 88 due to complications from Alzheimer's disease.  He was the first democratically elected President of the Republic of the Congo and served from August 1992 until October 1997. He was overthrown by the current President Denis Sassou Nguesso in the 1997 civil war.
August 25 – Africa is declared free of wild polio, the second virus to be eradicated from the continent since smallpox 40 years previously.
August 26 – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos becomes the first person in history to have a net worth exceeding $200 billion, according to Forbes.
August 26 – Gerald Carr, American astronaut and aeronautical engineer, dies at age 88.  He was Commander of Skylab 4, the third and final crewed visit to the Skylab Orbital Workshop, from November 16, 1973, to February 8, 1974.
August 27 – Hurricane Laura makes landfall in Lake Charles, Louisiana with winds of 150 mph, making it the strongest hurricane to ever strike the state in terms of windspeed, tied with the 1856 Last Island Hurricane.
August 28 – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in the history of Japan, announces his resignation from office, citing ill health.
August 28 – Chadwick Boseman, American actor, dies at age 43 from colon cancer.  His breakthrough performance came in 2013 as baseball player Jackie Robinson in the biographical film 42. He continued to portray historical figures, starring in Get on Up (2014) as singer James Brown and Marshall (2017) as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.  Boseman achieved international fame for playing superhero Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) from 2016 to 2019. He appeared in four MCU films, including an eponymous 2018 film that earned him an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. As the first black actor to headline an MCU film, he was also named to the 2018 Time 100.  His final film, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, was released posthumously in 2020 to critical acclaim.
August 30 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 25 million worldwide. India continues to record the highest daily increase of cases.
August 31 - Nina Bocharova, Soviet and Ukrainian Olympic gymnast, dies at age 95.  She won four medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics.
August 31 - Tom Seaver, American baseball player, dies at age 75 of complications of Lewy body dementia.  He played 20 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Mets, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago White Sox, and Boston Red Sox from 1967 to 1986. A longtime Met, Seaver played a significant role in their victory in the 1969 World Series over the Baltimore Orioles.  With the Mets, Seaver won the National League's (NL) Rookie of the Year Award in 1967, and won three NL Cy Young Awards as the league's best pitcher. He was a 12-time All-Star and ranks as the Mets' all-time leader in wins. During his MLB career, he compiled 311 wins, 3,640 strikeouts, 61 shutouts, and a 2.86 earned run average, and he threw a no-hitter in 1978.  In 1992, Seaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the highest percentage of votes ever recorded at the time.  Along with Mike Piazza, he is one of two players wearing a New York Mets hat on his plaque in the Hall of Fame. Seaver's No. 41 was retired by the Mets in 1988, and New York City changed the address of Citi Field to 41 Seaver Way in 2019. Seaver is also a member of the New York Mets Hall of Fame and the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame.

September 2 - David Graeber, American anthropologist and anarchist author, dies at age 59 from internal bleeding caused by necrotic pancreatitis.  He was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.  His activism included protests against the 3rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, and against the 2002 World Economic Forum in New York City. Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is sometimes credited with having coined the slogan "We are the 99%".  He accepted credit for the description "the 99%" but said that others had expanded it into the slogan.
September 2 - Kang Kek Iew, Cambodian prison commander and war criminal, dies at age 77 of incurable lung disease.  He was a leader in the Khmer Rouge movement, which ruled Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979. As the head of the government's internal security branch (Santebal), he oversaw the Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison camp where thousands were held for interrogation and torture, after which the vast majority of these prisoners were eventually executed.  He was the first Khmer Rouge leader to be tried by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime, and was convicted of crimes against humanity, murder, and torture for his role during the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. On Candlemas Day February 2 2012, his sentence was extended to life imprisonment by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.  Even though he was responsible for the death of thousands of people, Kang Kek Iew, unlike other Khmer Rouge cadres, did not dismiss or justify his crimes. He admitted that he had been wrong and that he had done horrible things; he said that he repented and that he had converted to Christianity. During his trial, he provided detailed accounts of what happened inside S-21 and inside the Khmer Rouge regime, and this helped shed light on the regime and other cadres' responsibility.  Even though Kang's case was on appeal, his convictions stand as is the case with Nuon Chea.
September 3 - Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Abdelaziz al-Hilu, the leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM–N), sign an agreement to transition the country into a secular state. The agreement comes three days after the signing of a peace deal between Sudan's transitional government and the Sudan Revolutionary Front, which the SPLM–N opted out of. Weeks later on October 3, the transitional government signed a peace deal with the main rebel groups, including the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, which had refused to engage in previous talks.
September 3 - The skeletons of 200 mammoths and 30 other animals are unearthed at a construction site for the Mexico City Santa Lucía Airport. It is the largest find of mammoth bones to date, surpassing The Mammoth Site in the U.S. which had 61 skeletons.
September 4 - Pope Benedict XVI becomes the longest-lived pope at 93 years, four months, and 16 days, surpassing Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903.
September 4 - The La Línea highway tunnel, the longest road tunnel in South America at a length of 8.65 kilometers (5.37 miles), is opened in Colombia after 14 years of construction and several delays.
September 4 - Kosovo and Serbia announce that they will normalize economic relations. The two countries will also move their Israeli embassies to Jerusalem, becoming the third and fourth countries (after the United States and Guatemala) to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
September 4 - Bahrain and Israel agree to normalize relations, marking the fourth Israel–Arab peace deal.
September 6 – Typhoon Haishen makes landfall on Japan and then South Korea as a strong category 2-equivalent typhoon.  It later makes landfall on North Korea where widespread flooding occurs.
September 8 - A hurricane-force windstorm struck the state of Utah.
September 14 - The Royal Astronomical Society announces the detection of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere, which is known to be a strong predictor for the presence of microbial life.  However, doubts have been cast on these observations due to data-processing issues and the failure to detect phosphine at other wavelengths.  By late October 2020, re-analysis of data with a proper subtraction of background did not result in the detection of phosphine.
September 14 - The first discovery of the perfectly preserved remains of a cave bear, believed to be 22,000 to 39,500 years old (Late Pleistocene), is made in Lyakhovsky Islands, Siberia in the thawing permafrost.
September 16 - A United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission formally accuses the Venezuelan government of crimes against humanity, including cases of killings, torture, violence against political opposition and disappearances since 2014. President Nicolás Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials are among those implicated in the charges.
September 16 - Yoshihide Suga becomes the new Prime Minister of Japan, replacing Shinzo Abe.
September 16 – Winston Groom, American novelist, dies at age 77 from a heart attack.  He is best known for his 1986 novel Forrest Gump, which was adapted into the popular 1994 film Forrest Gump directed by Robert Zemeckis. The film was considered a cultural phenomenon and won six Academy Awards. He published a sequel, Gump and Co., in 1995. He also wrote numerous non-fiction works, on diverse subjects including the American Civil War and World War I.
September 17 - France, Germany, and the United Kingdom issue a joint note verbale to the United Nations rejecting China's claims to the South China Sea, and supporting the ruling in Philippines v. China that said the historic rights per the nine-dash line ran counter to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. However, the statement says that on "territorial sovereignty" they "take no position".
September 17 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 30 million worldwide.
September 17 – Terry Goodkind, American novelist, dies at age 72.  He was known for the epic fantasy series The Sword of Truth as well as the contemporary suspense novel The Law of Nines (2009), which has ties to his fantasy series. The Sword of Truth series sold 25 million copies worldwide and was translated into more than 20 languages.  Additionally, it was adapted into a television series called Legend of the Seeker, which premiered on November 1, 2008, and ran for two seasons, ending in May 2010.  Goodkind was a proponent of Ayn Rand's philosophical approach of Objectivism, and made references to Rand's ideas and novels in his works.
September 18 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, American jurist, and gender equality pioneer, dies at age 87 due to complications from pancreatic cancer.  She served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in September 2020.  She was nominated by President Bill Clinton, replacing retiring justice Byron White, and at the time was generally viewed as a moderate consensus-builder. She eventually became part of the liberal wing of the Court.  Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor.  She was hostile to religious liberty in several cases including: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and Little Sisters of the Poor v. Azar.  She earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University and married Martin D. Ginsburg, becoming a mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class. Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated joint first in her class. During the early 1960s she worked with the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, learned Swedish and co-authored a book with Swedish jurist Anders Bruzelius; her work in Sweden profoundly influenced her thinking on gender equality. She then became a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field.  During the presidency of Barack Obama, some progressive attorneys and activists called for Ginsburg to retire so that Obama could appoint a like-minded successor, particularly while the Democratic party held control of the U.S. Senate.  They mentioned Ginsburg's age and past health issues as factors making her longevity uncertain.  Ginsburg rejected these pleas.  She affirmed her wish to remain a justice as long as she was mentally sharp enough to perform her duties.  Some believed that in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, she was waiting for candidate Hillary Clinton to beat candidate Donald Trump before retiring, so Clinton would be able to nominate an even more liberal justice.
September 19 – A 1634 edition of The Two Noble Kinsmen, the last play by English playwright William Shakespeare, is discovered at the Royal Scots College's library in Salamanca, Spain. It is believed to be the oldest copy of any of his works in the country.
September 19 - Lee Kerslake, English rock musician, dies at age 73 from prostate cancer.  He was best known as the longtime drummer and backing vocalist for the rock band Uriah Heep and for his work with Ozzy Osbourne in the early 1980s.
September 20 – BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) release the FinCEN Files, a collection of 2,657 documents relating to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network describing over 200,000 suspicious transactions valued at over $2 trillion that occurred from 1999 to 2017 across multiple global financial institutions.
September 20 – Michael Chapman, American cinematographer and film director, dies at age 84 from congestive heart failure.  He was well known for his work on many films of the American New Wave of the 1970s and in the 1980s with directors such as Martin Scorsese and Ivan Reitman. He shot more than forty feature films and of those movies on over half he worked with only three different directors.  Some of his filmography included: Taxi Driver, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Raging Bull, The Lost Boys, Scrooged, Ghostbusters II, Kindergarten Cop, The Fugitive, Space Jam, Evolution, Hoot, and Bridge to Terabithia.
September 21 – Microsoft agrees to buy video game holding company ZeniMax Media, including Bethesda Softworks and their following subsidiaries for $7.5 billion, in what is the biggest and most expensive takeover in the history of the video game industry.
September 21 - Arthur Ashkin, American Nobel physicist, dies at age 98.  He worked at Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies, and has been considered by many as the father of optical tweezers, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 at age 96, becoming the oldest Nobel Laureate until 2019 when John B. Goodenough was awarded at 97.  Optical tweezers (originally called single-beam gradient force trap) are scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to hold and move microscopic and sub-microscopic objects like atoms, nanoparticles and droplets, in a manner similar to tweezers. If the object is held in air or vacuum without additional support, it can be called optical levitation.
September 21 - Tommy DeVito, American musician and singer, dies at age 92 from COVID-19.  He was best known as a founding member, vocalist, and lead guitarist of rock band the Four Seasons.  The Four Seasons were one of only two American bands (the other being the Beach Boys) to enjoy substantial chart success before, during, and after the British Invasion.  The band's original line-up was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, and joined the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999.  They are one of the best-selling musical groups of all time, having sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide.
September 22 - A Hasbro Pulse crowdfunded campaign for $1,000,000 to produce an updated edition of HeroQuest with new figures, and Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord expansions is announced. Funding was achieved with 24 hours, with Hasbro expecting to ship in late 2021. The initial campaign was for US & Canada only, with Hasbro later expanding the campaign to include Australia, United Kingdom and New Zealand.
September 23 - Gale Sayers, American gridiron football player, dies at age 77 from dementia.  He was both a halfback and return specialist in the National Football League (NFL). In a relatively brief but highly productive NFL career, Sayers spent seven seasons with the Chicago Bears from 1965 to 1971, though multiple injuries effectively limited him to five seasons of play. He was known for his elusiveness and agility and was regarded by his peers as one of the most difficult players to tackle.  Sayers was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977 at age 34 and remains the youngest person to have received the honor. He was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary Team as a halfback and kick returner, the only player to occupy two positions on the team. In 2019, he was named to the NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.
September 24 - Corine Rottschäfer, Dutch model and beauty contestant, dies at age 82.  She won the 1959 Miss World contest, representing the Netherlands.  She was the first woman from her country to win the title. The pageant was held in London, United Kingdom.  She is the second cousin of Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2012, Bodine Koehler.
September 27 – Deadly clashes erupt in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Republic of Artsakh introduce martial law and mobilize forces.
September 27 - John D. Barrow, English cosmologist, theoretical physicist and mathematician, dies at age 67 from colon cancer.  He served as Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College from 2008 to 2011.  Barrow was also a writer of popular science and an amateur playwright.
September 29 - COVID-19 pandemic: The worldwide death toll from COVID-19 exceeds one million.
September 29 - Mac Davis, American singer-songwriter and actor, dies at age 78 following heart surgery.  A native of Lubbock, Texas, he enjoyed success as a crossover artist, and during his early career wrote for Elvis Presley, providing him with the hits "Memories", "In the Ghetto", "Don't Cry Daddy", and "A Little Less Conversation". A subsequent solo career in the 1970s produced hits such as "Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me". Davis also starred in his own variety show, a Broadway musical, and various films and TV shows.

October 1 – The EU began legal proceedings against the UK after it ignored their deadline to drop controversial sections from its internal market Bill.
October 2 – Bob Gibson, American baseball player, dies at age 84 from pancreatic cancer.  He played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the St. Louis Cardinals (1959–1975). Nicknamed "Gibby" and "Hoot" (after actor Hoot Gibson), Gibson tallied 251 wins, 3,117 strikeouts, and a 2.91 earned run average (ERA) during his career. A nine-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion, he won two Cy Young Awards and the 1968 National League (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award. Known for a fiercely competitive nature and for intimidating opposing batters, he was elected in 1981 to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. The Cardinals retired his uniform number 45 in September 1975 and inducted him into the team Hall of Fame in 2014.  Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Gibson overcame childhood illness to excel in youth sports, particularly basketball and baseball. After briefly playing under contract to both the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team and the St. Louis Cardinals organization, Gibson decided to continue playing only baseball professionally. He became a full-time starting pitcher in July 1961 and earned his first All-Star appearance in 1962. Gibson won 2 of 3 games he pitched in the 1964 World Series, then won 20 games in a season for the first time in 1965. Gibson also pitched three complete game victories in the 1967 World Series.
October 4 – Kenzō Takada, Japanese-born French fashion designer, dies at age 81 from COVID-19.  He founded Kenzo, a worldwide brand of perfumes, skincare products, and clothes, and was the honorary president of the Asian Couture Federation.
October 5 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 35 million worldwide. The news coincides with the World Health Organization estimating that total worldwide cases may be around 760 million - roughly a tenth of the global population.
October 6 - Johnny Nash, American singer-songwriter, dies at age 80 after a period of declining health.  He was best known in the United States for his 1972 hit "I Can See Clearly Now".  Primarily a reggae and pop singer, he was one of the first non-Jamaican artists to record reggae music in Kingston; the capital and largest city of Jamaica.
October 6 - Eddie Van Halen, Dutch-American musician and songwriter, dies at age 65 from a stroke.  He was the main songwriter and guitarist of the American rock band Van Halen, which he co-founded in 1972 with his brother, drummer Alex Van Halen, bassist Mark Stone, and singer David Lee Roth. He is regarded as one of the all-time greatest guitar players in rock history and was well known for popularizing the tapping guitar solo technique, allowing rapid arpeggios to be played with two hands on the fretboard.
October 7 – Mario J. Molina, Mexican Nobel chemist, dies at age 77 from a heart attack.  He played a pivotal role in the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, and was a co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in noting the threat to the Earth's ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. He was the first Mexican-born scientist to receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
October 8 - Whitey Ford, American baseball player, dies at age 91 after suffering from dementia for several years.  He was a pitcher who played his entire 16-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career with the New York Yankees. He was a 10-time All-Star and 6-time World Series champion. In 1961, he won both the Cy Young Award and World Series Most Valuable Player Award. Ford led the American League (AL) in wins three times and in earned run average (ERA) twice. He is the Yankees franchise leader in career wins (236), shutouts (45), innings pitched (3,170 1⁄3), and games started by a pitcher (438; tied with Andy Pettitte). Ford was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.  Ford signed with the Yankees as an amateur free agent in 1947 and made his major league debut in 1950. Following a two-year sojourn to serve in the United States Army during the Korean War, Ford returned to the Yankees in 1953 and pitched for them until retiring in 1967. During his tenure with the team, Ford set numerous World Series pitching records, including consecutive scoreless innings (33 2⁄3), wins (10), games started (22), innings pitched (146), and strikeouts (94). The Yankees retired his uniform number 16 in 1974 and dedicated a plaque in his honor in Monument Park in 1987. Ford served as the Yankees pitching coach in 1964 while still a player and from 1974 to 1975 after retiring. He also served as the team's first base coach in 1968.  He died while watching the Yankees play in Game 4 of the 2020 American League Division Series on television and was surrounded by his family.
October 8 - Charles Moore, American athlete and Olympic champion, dies at age 91.  Moore won a gold medal in the 400 metre hurdles in the 1952 Summer Olympics with a time of 50.8 seconds, narrowly missing the world record of 50.6 seconds. He had set the American record (50.7 seconds) during Olympic qualifying. He also ran the third leg of the second-place 4×400 metres relay at the Olympics. Moore finished second for the James E. Sullivan Award for top U.S. athlete in 1952, and was selected as one of "100 Golden Olympians" in 1996. In 1999, he was inducted into the United States National Track and Field Hall of Fame.
October 8 - Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, Iranian classical singer, dies at age 80 from kidney cancer.  He was a master (Ostad) of Persian traditional music and is widely considered as one of the greatest Iranian artists of all time. Shajarian was also known for his skills in Persian calligraphy and humanitarian activities.  After coming out in support of the Iranian Green Movement and criticizing the Iranian government, he was banned from holding concerts and releasing music.
October 10 – Armenia and Azerbaijan agree on a ceasefire in the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
October 14 - Rhonda Fleming, American actress, dies at age 97.  She acted in more than 40 films, mostly in the 1940s and 1950s, and became renowned as one of the most glamorous actresses of her day, nicknamed the "Queen of Technicolor" because she photographed so well in that medium. She was a Presbyterian and a Republican who supported Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election.  In 1964, Fleming spoke at the "Project Prayer" rally attended by 2,500 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. The gathering, which was hosted by Anthony Eisley, a star of ABC's Hawaiian Eye series, sought to flood the United States Congress with letters in support of mandatory school prayer, following two decisions in 1962 and 1963 of the United States Supreme Court, which struck down mandatory school prayer as conflicting with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  Through her son Kent Lane (b. 1941), Rhonda also had two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly), four great-grandchildren (Wagner, Page, Lane, and Cole), and two great-great-grandchildren.
October 15 - 2020 Thai protests: The Government of Thailand declares a "severe" state of emergency banning gatherings of five or more people, initiating a crackdown on demonstrations and imposing media censorship.
October 15 - President of Kyrgyzstan Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigns from office after weeks of massive protests in the wake of the October 2020 parliamentary election; opposition leader Sadyr Japarov assumes office as both the acting President and Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan.
October 17 – 2020 New Zealand general election: Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party wins a landslide second term in office, defeating the National Party led by Judith Collins and gaining the country's first parliamentary majority since the introduction of the MMP voting system in 1994 for its unicameral House of Representatives.
October 19 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 40 million worldwide.
October 20 – NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly touches down on Bennu, becoming the agency's first probe to retrieve samples from an asteroid, with its cargo due for return to Earth in 2023.
October 20 - James Randi, Canadian-American magician and skeptic, dies at age 92 from age related causes.  He extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.  He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively called "woo-woo".  Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87.  Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi said he disliked the term's connotations and preferred to describe himself as an "investigator".  He wrote about paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, famously exposing fraudulent faith healer Peter Popoff, and was occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!  Before Randi's retirement, JREF sponsored the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, which offered a prize of one million US dollars to eligible applicants who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties.  In 2015, the James Randi Educational Foundation said they will no longer accept applications directly from people claiming to have a paranormal power, but will offer the challenge to anyone who has passed a preliminary test that meets with their approval.
October 22 – The Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women's Health and Strengthening the Family is signed by government representatives from 34 countries.
October 23 - At the end of an 11-year demining process, the Falkland Islands are declared free of land mines, 38 years after the end of the 1982 war.
October 23 - Israel and Sudan agree to normalize relations, marking the fifth Israel–Arab peace deal.
October 25 - Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, 6th Vice President of Iraq, dies at age 78.  He served as Vice Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council until the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and was regarded as the closest advisor and deputy under former President Saddam Hussein. He led the Iraqi insurgent Naqshbandi Army.  Al-Douri was the most high-profile Ba'athist official to successfully evade capture after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and was the king of clubs in the infamous most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. Al-Douri continued to lead elements of the Iraqi insurgency such as the Naqshbandi Army against the then-occupation forces and waged an insurgency against the current regime in Baghdad. Following the execution of Saddam Hussein on December 30, 2006, al-Douri was confirmed as the new leader of the banned Iraqi Ba'ath Party on January 3, 2007.
October 25 - Lee Kun-hee, South Korean electronics executive, dies at age 78.  He was hospitalized in Seoul in May 2014 after suffering a heart attack, and lapsed into a coma, which he remained in until his death.  He served as chairman of the Samsung Group from 1987 to 2008 and from 2010 to 2020, and is credited with the transformation of Samsung to the world's largest manufacturer of smartphones, televisions, and memory chips. He was also a member of the International Olympic Committee. He was the third son of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul. With an estimated net worth of US$21 billion at the time of his death, he was the richest person in South Korea, a position that he had held since 2007.  He was convicted twice, once in 1996 and subsequently in 2008, for corruption and tax evasion charges, but was pardoned on both instances. In 2014, Lee was named the world's 35th most powerful person and the most powerful Korean by Forbes's list of the world's most powerful people along with his son, Lee Jae-yong.
October 26 – NASA confirms the existence of molecular water on the sunlit side of the Moon, near Clavius crater, at concentrations of up to 412 parts per million.
October 29 – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) confirms the death of least 140 migrants who drowned off the coast of Senegal on a vessel bound for the Spanish Canary Islands. It is the deadliest shipwreck of 2020 so far.
October 29 – Angelika Amon, Austrian-American molecular and cell biologist, dies at age 53 from ovarian cancer.  She was the Kathleen and Curtis Marble Professor in Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Amon's research centered on how chromosomes are regulated, duplicated, and partitioned in the cell cycle. Amon was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.
October 30 - 2020 Aegean Sea earthquake: A magnitude 7.0 earthquake hits Turkey and Greece, killing 119 people and injuring over 1,000.
October 30 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 45 million worldwide.
October 31 – Typhoon Goni makes landfall in the Philippines, becoming the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone in history, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and killing dozens of people in the region.
October 31 - Sean Connery, Scottish actor, dies at age 90 of pneumonia and heart failure.  He became known as the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983.  Originating the role in Dr. No, Connery played Bond in six of Eon Productions' entries and made his final appearance in the Jack Schwartzman-produced Never Say Never Again.

November 1 - 2020 Moldovan presidential election: Former Prime Minister and Minister of Education Maia Sandu is elected as the 6th President of Moldova, becoming the first woman to ever hold the post.
November 3 - Hurricane Eta makes landfall in Nicaragua, killing over 100 people in Central America as a category 4.
November 3 – November 7 - 2020 United States presidential election: Joe Biden is elected as the 46th President of the United States, after remaining vote counts (November 7) come in from key states delayed by an influx of mail-in ballots caused by the pandemic, defeating the incumbent President Donald Trump.
November 4 – The United States formally exits the Paris Agreement on climate change.
November 7 – Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi and author, dies at age 72 from cancer.  In July 2012 a group of prominent British Jews criticized Sacks for opposing plans to allow civil marriage for gays and lesbians.  In October 2017, Jonathan Sacks inveighed against a "politics of anger" he said was corroding the fabric of U.S. society.  In a June 2019 debate on anti-Semitism in the House of Lords, Sacks stated that "there is hardly a country in the world, certainly not a single country in Europe, where Jews feel safe" and that societies tolerating anti-Semitism had "forfeited all moral credibility".  Additionally, Rabbi Sacks equated anti-Semitism to a "mutating virus."
November 8 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 50 million worldwide.
November 8 – Alex Trebek, Canadian-American game show host, dies at age 80 from pancreatic cancer.  He was the host of the syndicated game show Jeopardy! for 37 seasons from its revival in 1984 until his death in 2020. He also hosted a number of other game shows, including The Wizard of Odds, Double Dare, High Rollers, Battlestars, Classic Concentration, and To Tell the Truth. Trebek also made appearances in numerous television series, in which he usually played himself.  A native of Canada, Trebek became a naturalized United States citizen in 1998.  He received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host seven times for his work on Jeopardy!.  He had been contracted to host Jeopardy! until 2022.  In a 2018 interview with Vulture, Trebek said he was a political moderate and registered independent, neither conservative nor liberal, with some libertarian leanings.  Trebek stated he believed in God as a Christian.  He moderated the 2018 Pennsylvania gubernatorial debate and said that he was raised Catholic during his childhood and adolescence.
November 9 - COVID-19 pandemic: The first successful phase III trial of a COVID-19 vaccine is announced by drug companies Pfizer and BioNTech, which is 90% effective according to interim results.
November 9 - 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a Russia-brokered ceasefire agreement.
November 9 – Tom Heinsohn, American basketball player and coach, dies at age 86 from kidney failure.  He was associated with the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA) for six decades as a player, coach and broadcaster. He played for the Celtics from 1956 to 1965, and also coached the team from 1969 to 1978. He spent over 30 years as the color commentator for the Celtics' local broadcasts alongside play-by-play commentator Mike Gorman. He is regarded as one of the most iconic Celtics figures in the franchise's history, known during his lifetime for his charisma and loyalty to the team and its traditions. From this he earned the nickname “Mr. Celtic”.  Heinsohn was inducted into the Hall of Fame for his contributions as a player. He was also inducted into the Hall of Fame for his success as a head coach. He also helped form the NBA Players Association labor union. Heinsohn was the only person to have the distinction of being involved in an official team capacity in each of the Celtics' 17 championships, as well as each of their 21 NBA Finals appearances.
November 11 – COVID-19 pandemic: The Sputnik V vaccine is proven to be 92% effective against COVID-19 according to interim results.
November 11 - Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, 1st Prime Minister of Bahrain, dies at age 84.  Serving 50 years and 11 months in office he was the world's longest serving prime minister in history at the time of his death.  Under the 2002 Constitution he lost some of his powers, with the King now having the authority to appoint and (along with the Bahraini parliament) dismiss ministers.  He was also the paternal uncle of the reigning King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and grand-uncle of the Crown Prince Salman, since he was the younger brother of the previous Emir Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa.
November 11 - Jorge Llopart, Spanish athlete, dies at age 68.   As a race walker, he competed in the 50 km event at the 1980, 1984, and 1988 Olympics and won a silver medal in 1980. He was a European champion in this event in 1978.
November 12 – Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers resign en masse, in response to four lawmakers' disqualification made by the government.
November 12 - Masatoshi Koshiba, Japanese Nobel physicist, dies at age 94.  He was one of the founders of neutrino astronomy. His work with the neutrino detectors Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande was instrumental in detecting solar neutrinos, providing experimental evidence for the solar neutrino problem.  Koshiba won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002 (jointly with Raymond Davis Jr.) "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos".  He was a senior counselor at the International Center for Elementary Particle Physics (ICEPP) and professor at the University of Tokyo.
November 13 – Peter Sutcliffe, English serial killer, dies at age 74 from a heart attack.  He was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper (an allusion to Jack the Ripper) by the press. On May 22, 1981, he was found guilty of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980.  He was sentenced to 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment, which were converted to a whole life order in 2010. All but two of Sutcliffe's murders took place in West Yorkshire, the others in Manchester.  Sutcliffe initially attacked women and girls in residential areas but appeared to have moved to red-light districts because he was attracted by the vulnerability of sex workers.  He had allegedly regularly used the services of sex workers in Leeds and Bradford. After his arrest in Sheffield by South Yorkshire Police for driving with false number plates in January 1981, Sutcliffe was transferred to West Yorkshire Police, who questioned him about the killings. He confessed to being the perpetrator, saying that the voice of God had sent him on a mission to kill prostitutes. At his trial, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility, but he was convicted of murder on a majority verdict. Following his conviction, Sutcliffe began using his mother's maiden name of Coonan.
November 14 - Peter Florjančič, Slovene inventor and athlete, dies at age 101.  His successful inventions included the perfume atomizer, and the plastic photographic slide frame.  At sixteen, he was the youngest member of the Yugoslav ski-jumping team in the 1936 Olympic Games.  In 1943, during the German annexation of Slovenia, Florjančič—knowing he would be called up to serve in the German Army on the Eastern Front—decided instead to join a friend on a fake skiing trip to Kitzbühel, Austria. He faked his own death on Hahnenkamm, escaping over the border into neutral Switzerland.  He met his future wife Verena, a Swiss model and actress, in Zürich and they went on to be married for more than 65 years.  While held in an internment camp as a refugee, he invented a loom that could be used by disabled servicemen.  His other successful inventions included a work-out bed and plastic ice skates. He also invented the plastic zipper (1948), and the airbag (1957), neither of which were successful at the time because of the quality of the materials available.  Both were perfected at later dates by other inventors.  In 2011, at 92 years old, and almost blind, Florjančič was still working, and sketching his inventions. He made and lost several fortunes over the course of his career.
November 15 - The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is signed by 15 Asia-Pacific countries to form the world's largest free-trade bloc, covering a third of the world's population.
November 15 - NASA and SpaceX launch the SpaceX Crew-1 mission from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A to the ISS, the first operational flight of the Crew Dragon capsule.
November 15 - Ray Clemence, English football goalkeeper, dies at age 72 from prostate cancer.  He is one of only 29 players to have made over 1,000 career appearances.  Winning three European Cups, five League titles, two UEFA Cups, a UEFA Super Cup, an FA Cup and a League Cup with Liverpool, the last of his 665 appearances for the club was the victorious 1981 European Cup Final.  He acted as head of the FA Development Team, overseeing the development made by players in the England youth teams from under-16 to 21 level, having previously been part of the England senior team's backroom staff.
November 16 - COVID-19 pandemic: Moderna's mRNA vaccine is proven to be 94.5% effective against COVID-19 based on interim results, including severe illnesses. The vaccine has been cited as being among those that are easier to distribute as no ultra-cold storage is required.
November 16 - Hurricane Iota makes landfall in Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane just two weeks after Hurricane Eta made landfall, devastating the same areas.
November 16 - Bruce Swedien, American audio engineer and record producer, dies at age 86 of complications from a surgery for a broken hip.  He was widely known for his work with Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Paul McCartney and Barbra Streisand.  Swedien first achieved widespread recognition as engineer with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' 1962 single "Big Girls Don't Cry" which sold over one million copies and stayed for five weeks on #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  Swedien won 5 Grammy Awards for Best Engineered Album for his work with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. He received 13 additional nominations.
November 17 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 55 million worldwide, with around a million cases recorded every two days on average.
November 18 – The Utah monolith is discovered by state biologists of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources in San Juan County.  in the weeks after the discovery of the monolith, over 170 similar metal columns were erected in other places throughout the world.
November 18 – COVID-19 pandemic: Pfizer and BioNTech complete trials on their COVID-19 vaccine, with an overall effectiveness rate of 95% without adverse events.
November 19 - The Brereton Report into Australian war crimes during the War in Afghanistan is released.
November 20 – Irinej, Serbian Patriarch, dies at age 90 from COVID-19.  It is believed that he contracted the virus while presiding over the November 1 funeral of Metropolitan Amfilohije, who had died from COVID-19.  Irinej was the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church from 2010 until his death in 2020. He had first been the bishop of Niš between 1975 and 2010. He was considered, both abroad and at home, to be a moderate traditionalist, open to global inter-religious dialogue.
November 22 – The United States withdraws from the Treaty on Open Skies.
November 23 – COVID-19 pandemic: AstraZeneca's AZD1222 vaccine, developed in collaboration with Oxford University, is shown to be 70% effective in protecting against COVID-19. The efficacy can be raised to 90% if an initial half dose is followed by a full dose a month later, based on interim data.
November 25 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 60 million worldwide.
November 25 - Diego Maradona, Argentine football player and manager, dies at age 60 from a heart attack.  Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, he was one of the two joint winners of the FIFA Player of the 20th Century award.  Maradona's vision, passing, ball control, and dribbling skills were combined with his small stature, which gave him a low center of gravity allowing him to maneuver better than most other players. His presence and leadership on the field had a great effect on his team's general performance, while he would often be singled out by the opposition. In addition to his creative abilities, he possessed an eye for goal and was known to be a free kick specialist. A precocious talent, Maradona was given the nickname "El Pibe de Oro" ("The Golden Boy"), a name that stuck with him throughout his career.  He also had a troubled off-field life and was banned in both 1991 and 1994 for abusing drugs. The American newspaper Houston Chronicle wrote of Maradona: “To understand the gargantuan shadow Maradona casts over his football-mad homeland, one has to conjure up the athleticism of Michael Jordan, the power of Babe Ruth – and the human fallibility of Mike Tyson. Lump them together in a single barrel-chested man with shaggy black hair and you have El Diego, idol to the millions who call him D10S, a mashup of his playing number and the Spanish word for God.”
November 25 - James Wolfensohn, 9th President of the World Bank Group, dies at age 86 of complications from pneumonia.  During his tenure at the World Bank, he is credited with the focus on poverty alleviation and a rethink on development financing, earning him recognition as a banker to the world's poor. In his other roles, he is credited with actions that brought Chrysler Corporation back from the brink of bankruptcy, and also improving the finances of major United States cultural institutions, including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He served two terms as President of the World Bank on the nomination of U.S. President Bill Clinton, and thereafter held various positions with charitable organizations and policy think-tanks including the Brookings Institution.  He was born in Sydney, Australia, and was a graduate of the University of Sydney and Harvard Business School; he was also an Olympic fencer at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne.  He worked for various companies in Britain and the United States before forming his own investment firm. Wolfensohn became an American citizen in 1980 and renounced his Australian citizenship, although he eventually regained it in 2010.
November 27 – Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, is assassinated near Tehran.

November 27 – Tony Hsieh, Internet entrepreneur, dies at age 46 from injuries sustained in house fire.  He retired as the CEO of the online shoe and clothing company Zappos in August 2020 after 21 years.  Prior to joining Zappos, Hsieh co-founded the Internet advertising network LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million.  In 2018 his net worth was estimated to be $840 million.
November 28 – Koshobe massacre: Boko Haram jihadists attack a farm in Jere, Nigeria, killing at least 43 people.
November 28 – David Prowse, English bodybuilder and actor, dies at age 85 after a short, unspecified illness.  He physically portrayed Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy and a manservant in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. In 2015, he starred in 2 documentaries concerning his Darth Vader role, one entitled The Force's Mouth which included Prowse voicing Darth Vader's lines with studio effects applied for the first time, and the other entitled I Am Your Father covering the subject of fallout between Prowse and Lucasfilm.  Prior to his role as Vader, Prowse had established himself as a figure in the United Kingdom as the Green Cross Man in the Green Cross Code road safety public information aimed at children.
November 30 - A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs; the last of four lunar eclipses in 2020.
November 30 - Protein folding, one of the biggest mysteries in biology, is solved by AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence algorithm developed by DeepMind.
November 30 - COVID-19 pandemic: Moderna files an application for Emergency Use Authorization in the United States after its vaccine achieved an efficacy of 94.1% from full trials without safety concerns. It also plans to do the same in EU soon.

December 1 - COVID-19 pandemic: Pfizer and BioNTech announced an Emergency Use Authorization application to the European Medicines Agency.
December 1 - The Arecibo Telescope of the Arecibo Observatory collapses, just weeks after the announcement of its planned demolition.
December 1 - Arnie Robinson, American athlete, dies at age 72 from COVID-19.  He won a bronze medal in the long jump at the 1972 Olympics and a gold medal in 1976.
December 2 - COVID-19 pandemic: The United Kingdom approves Pfizer-BioNTech's BNT162b2 vaccine, being the first country in the world to do so.
December 2 - Three activists in Hong Kong were jailed for their roles in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, with Joshua Wong getting the heaviest sentence at 13.5 months.
December 2 - Rafer Johnson, American decathlete and actor, dies at age 86 after suffering a stroke.  He was the 1960 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, having won silver in 1956. He had previously won a gold in the 1955 Pan American Games. He was the USA team's flag bearer at the 1960 Olympics and lit the Olympic cauldron at the Los Angeles Games in 1984.  In 1968, Johnson, football player Rosey Grier, and journalist George Plimpton tackled Sirhan Sirhan moments after he had fatally shot Robert F. Kennedy.  After he retired from athletics, Johnson turned to acting, sportscasting, and public service and was instrumental in creating the California Special Olympics.
December 3 – The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs votes to remove cannabis from a list of dangerous drugs in recognition of its medical value, although some controls will remain.
December 4 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 65 million worldwide, with the global death toll exceeding 1.5 million. Figures reflect that, in the last week, over 10,000 people worldwide have died on average every day, with one death every nine seconds. According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 had caused more deaths in 2020 than tuberculosis in 2019, as well as four times the number of deaths than malaria.
December 4 - Somali Civil War: The United States announces its withdrawal from the conflict over the next month.
December 5 – COVID-19 pandemic: Russia begins mass vaccination against COVID-19 with the Sputnik V candidate.
December 6 – The 2020 Venezuelan parliamentary election takes place.  The opposition parties that make up the Democratic Unity Roundtable coalition agreed unanimously not to participate in the election.
December 7 – Chuck Yeager, American Air Force officer and test pilot, dies at age 97.  Yeager's career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army, assigned to the Army Air Forces in 1941.  After serving as an aircraft mechanic, in September 1942, he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II Army Air Force version of the Army's warrant officer), later achieving most of his aerial victories as a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot on the Western Front, where he was credited with shooting down 11.5 enemy aircraft (the half credit is from a second pilot assisting him in a single shootdown). On October 12, 1944, he attained "ace in a day" status, shooting down five enemy aircraft in one mission.  After the war, Yeager became a test pilot and flew many types of aircraft, including experimental rocket-powered aircraft for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Through the NACA program, he became the first human to officially break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947 when he flew the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 m), for which he won both the Collier and Mackay trophies in 1948. He then went on to break several other speed and altitude records in the following years.  Yeager later commanded fighter squadrons and wings in Germany, as well as in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. In recognition of his achievements and the outstanding performance ratings of those units, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1969 and inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1973, retiring on March 1, 1975. Yeager's three-war active-duty flying career spanned more than 30 years and took him to many parts of the world, including the Korean War zone and the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. Throughout his life, he flew more than 360 different types of aircraft.
December 8 - COVID-19 pandemic: The United Kingdom becomes the first nation to begin a mass inoculation campaign using a clinically authorized, fully tested vaccine, Tozinameran.
December 8 - Nepal and China officially agree on Mount Everest's actual height, which is 8,848.86 meters or 29,031.69 feet.
December 9 - Paolo Rossi, Italian footballer, dies at age 64 from lung cancer.  In 1982, he led Italy to the 1982 FIFA World Cup title, scoring six goals to win the Golden Boot as top goal scorer, and the Golden Ball for the player of the tournament. Rossi is one of only three players to have won all three awards at a World Cup, along with Garrincha in 1962, and Mario Kempes in 1978. Rossi was also awarded the 1982 Ballon d'Or as the European Footballer of the Year for his performances. Along with Roberto Baggio and Christian Vieri, he is Italy's top scorer in World Cup history, with nine goals overall.
December 10 - COVID-19 pandemic: The United States and Saudi Arabia approve tozinameran for emergency use, while Argentina approves Sputnik V.
December 10 - Western Sahara conflict, Arab–Israeli conflict: Israel and Morocco normalize diplomatic relations. Simultaneously, the United States reaffirms its previous recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara and announces plans to build a consulate there.
December 10 - France: End of Nicolas Sarkozy corruption trial.  It is based on allegations that former president Nicolas Sarkozy bribed a judge with a retirement package in return for information on an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations due to payments he is said to have received from heiress Liliane Bettencourt.  A verdict is expected on March 1, 2021.
December 11 – The European Union agrees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% over the next decade.
December 11 - James Flynn, New Zealand intelligence researcher, dies at age 86.  Originally from Washington, D.C. and educated at the University of Chicago, Flynn emigrated to New Zealand in 1963, where he taught political studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin. Widely respected by colleagues and students, who knew him as "Jim Flynn", he ultimately achieved the position of Emeritus Professor. He was noted for his publications about the continued year-after-year increase of IQ scores throughout the world, which is now referred to as the Flynn effect.  Flynn's son Victor is a mathematics professor at New College, Oxford.  During 2007, new research from the 2006 New Zealand census showed that women without a college education had produced 2.57 babies each, compared to 1.85 babies for those women with a higher education.
December 12 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 70 million worldwide.
December 12 - Bhutan and Israel normalize diplomatic relations.
December 12 - John le Carré, English author, dies at age 89 from pneumonia.  He was a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works.  Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author. His books include The Looking Glass War (1965), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), Smiley's People (1979), The Little Drummer Girl (1983), The Night Manager (1993), The Tailor of Panama (1996), The Constant Gardener (2001), A Most Wanted Man (2008), and Our Kind of Traitor (2010), all of which have been adapted for film or television.
December 12 - Charley Pride, American singer, musician and guitarist, dies at age 86 from COVID-19.  His greatest musical success came in the early to mid-1970s, when he was the best-selling performer for RCA Records since Elvis Presley.  During the peak years of his recording career (1966–1987), he had 52 top-10 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, 30 of which made it to number one. He won the Entertainer of the Year award at the Country Music Association Awards in 1971.  Pride was one of three African-American members of the Grand Ole Opry (the others being DeFord Bailey and Darius Rucker). He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000.  When Pride was 14, his mother purchased him his first guitar and he taught himself to play.  Though he loved music, one of Pride's lifelong dreams was to become a professional baseball player. In 1952, he pitched for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. In 1953, he signed a contract with the Boise Yankees, the Class C farm team of the New York Yankees. During that season, an injury caused him to lose the "mustard" on his fastball, and he was sent to the Yankees' Class D team in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Later that season, while in the Negro leagues with the Louisville Clippers, two players – Pride and Jesse Mitchell – were traded to the Birmingham Black Barons for a team bus. "Jesse and I may have the distinction of being the only players in history to be traded for a used motor vehicle," Pride mused in his 1994 autobiography.  Pride pitched for several other minor league teams, his hopes of making it to the big leagues still alive, but was drafted into the United States Army in 1956. After basic training, he was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, where he was a quartermaster and played on the Fort's baseball team. That team won the "All Army" sports championship. When discharged in 1958, he rejoined the Memphis Red Sox.  He tried to return to baseball, though hindered by an injury to his throwing arm.
December 12 - Jack Steinberger, German-born American Nobel physicist, dies at age 99.  He was noted for his work with neutrinos, the subatomic particles considered to be elementary constituents of matter. He was a recipient of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Leon M. Lederman and Melvin Schwartz, for the discovery of the muon neutrino. Through his career as an experimental particle physicist, he held positions at the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University (1950–68), and the CERN (1968–86). He was also a recipient of the United States National Medal of Science in 1988, and the Matteucci Medal from the Italian Academy of Sciences in 1990.
December 14 - COVID-19 pandemic: The United States and Canada begin mass vaccination with Tozinameran.  In addition, Singapore approves Pfizer-BioNTech's Tozinameran vaccine, with other companies to provide vaccines progressively.
December 14 - Sudan–United States relations: The United States removes Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
December 14 - Turkey–United States relations: The United States places sanctions on Turkey in retaliation for their purchase of a S-400 missile system from Russia, making the first time they have sanctioned a NATO ally.
December 14 - A total solar eclipse is visible from parts of the South Pacific Ocean, southern South America, and the South Atlantic Ocean.
December 15 – The International Criminal Court accuses the Philippines of crimes against humanity in its war on drugs.
December 15 – Saufatu Sopoanga, 8th Prime Minister of Tuvalu, dies at age 68.  He drew international attention for his speeches warning about the effects of the rising sea level on Tuvalu and other low-lying island countries.  He later served as Deputy Prime Minister from 2004 to 2006. His younger brother Enele Sopoaga served as Prime Minister of Tuvalu from 2013 to 2019.
December 16 – The United States formally designates Switzerland and Vietnam as being currency manipulators.
December 17 – Pierre Buyoya, 3rd President of Burundi, dies at age 71 from COVID-19.  He served two terms as President of Burundi in 1987 to 1993 and 1996 to 2003 as de facto military dictator. He was the second-longest serving president in Burundian history.
December 18 - COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 75 million worldwide.
December 18 - COVID-19 pandemic: The United States approves Moderna's vaccine for emergency use, the second brand available here.
December 20 – COVID-19 pandemic: A highly infectious new strain of SARS-CoV-2 spreading in Europe and Australia provokes international border closures.
December 21 - COVID-19 pandemic: 36 cases are reported on the Base General Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme in the Chilean Antarctic Territory, marking the first infections in Antarctica, the last continent to report infections.
December 21 - A great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurs, with the two planets separated in the sky by 0.1 degrees. This is the closest conjunction between the two planets since 1623.
December 23 – COVID-19 pandemic: Canada approves Moderna's vaccine, the second country to do so.
December 24 - The United Kingdom and the European Union agree to a comprehensive free trade agreement prior to the end of the transition period.
December 24 - COVID-19 pandemic: the Chinese Sinovac's vaccine reached a rate of 91.25% efficacy in trials in Turkey.
December 24 - John Cremona, Acting President of Malta, dies at age 102.  He was the Attorney General of Malta during independence talks in 1964 and helped draft the Constitution of Malta. He served as the chief justice of Malta from 1971 to 1981.  He assumed the functions of Head of State in an acting capacity several times, both as Governor-General and President. He simultaneously served as Malta's first representative judge on the European Court of Human Rights from 1965 to 1992. Cremona was also a noted poet, writing in Italian, English, and Maltese.
December 24 - Ivry Gitlis, Israeli violinist, dies at age 98 in Paris.  He was a virtuoso and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. He performed with the world's top orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
December 25 – K. C. Jones, American basketball player and coach, dies at age 88 from Alzheimer's disease.  He is best known for his association with the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA), with whom he won 11 of his 12 NBA championships (eight as a player, one as an assistant coach, and two as a head coach).  As a player, he is tied for third for most NBA championships in a career, and is one of three NBA players with an 8–0 record in NBA Finals series.  He is the only African-American coach other than Bill Russell to have won multiple NBA championships.  Jones was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1989.
December 26 - George Blake, British spy and double agent, dies at age 98.  He was a spy with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union. He became a communist and decided to work for the MGB while a prisoner during the Korean War. Discovered in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years in prison, he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison in west London in 1966 and fled to the Soviet Union. He was not one of the Cambridge Five spies, although he associated with Donald Maclean and Kim Philby after reaching the Soviet Union.  The RIA Novosti news agency first reported Blake's death, citing Russia's SVR foreign intelligence agency. "We received some bitter news—the legendary George Blake passed away," it said.  Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself an ex-KGB agent, expressed his "deep condolences" to Blake's family and friends. In a message published on the Kremlin website, the Russian leader noted Blake's "invaluable contribution to ensuring strategic parity and maintaining peace on the planet."  Putin also said of Blake, "Colonel Blake was a brilliant professional of special vitality and courage."  Although Blake's espionage during the Cold War may have been of greater value to the Soviets than that of the Cambridge Five spy ring, "Blake was never part of this [elite] class-ridden inner circle", according to an article by The Guardian after Blake's death. "Born in Rotterdam to a Dutch mother and an Egyptian Jewish father [he] was never considered one of them."  Blake was buried with military honors at Moscow's Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.
December 27 – COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 80 million worldwide.
December 28 – Armando Manzanero, Mexican singer-songwriter, dies at age 85 from COVID-19.  He was a Mexican Mayan musician, singer, composer, actor and music producer, widely considered the premier Mexican romantic composer of the postwar era and one of the most successful composers of Latin America.  He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in the United States in 2014. He was the president of the Mexican Society of Authors and Composers (Sociedad de Autores y Compositores de México).
December 29 – The 2020 Petrinja earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 strikes Croatia, killing seven and injuring more than 20.
December 30 – COVID-19 pandemic: The United Kingdom approves AstraZeneca-Oxford's vaccine, the second one available. The vaccine is easier to store as it only requires normal fridge temperatures, making distribution easier.
December 31 – The transition period following the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union on January 31, 2020 expires.

Top 15 websites in the United States according to Alexa

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