Milestones: a look at 2022's pop-culture anniversaries

It’s 10 years since the Mayans predicted the end of the world, two decades since we introduced the euro, and quarter of a century since the Spice Girls took over the world. Wondering what other retrospectives you’ll be reading about this year? Suzanne Harrington takes a look

Boats patrol near the Costa Concordia on January 15, 2012, after the cruise ship ran aground and keeled over off the Isola del Giglio yesterday. Two French passengers and one Peruvian crew member have been confirmed killed in the disaster, apparently after jumping into the chilly Mediterranean waters after the Costa Concordia hit rocks late Friday and began to keel over. AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)

Hello and welcome to the sci-fi sounding year 2022! We are counting on you, 2022, not to make us learn any more Greek letters like Omicron. We’ve had quite enough of that already. 

Instead, let’s take a look at all the anniversaries coming up this year, starting with Jimi Hendrix’s 80th birthday, and the 100th birthdays of Doris Day, Judy Garland and Ava Gardner. 

Doesn’t that make you feel old? And yet already it’s been……

It's been 10 years since...

Beyonce Knowles and Blue Ivy Carter are seen in Midtown on November 4, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Alo Ceballos/GC Images)

• The Mayan end of the world prophecy fails to come true, and the world carries on as normal.
• The captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship steers too close to land, causing the deaths of 32 people in Italy.
• Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne for 60 years, as her grandson William and his missus announce a pregnancy.
• The first child of American royalty Beyonce and Jay-Z is born – a daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, described by Time as “the most famous baby in the world.”
• Denmark legalises same-sex marriage, as ‘mommy porn’ engulfs the heterosexual world after the publication of EL James’ Fifty Shades Of Grey, which outsells Harry Potter.
• The Olympics, with an opening ceremony orchestrated by film director Danny Boyle, happen in London.
• The Encyclopaedia Britannica goes out of print after 246 years. Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia. He’s still there.
• India suffers the worst power cut in human history, leaving 620 million people without electricity. Over in Switzerland, the Higgs Bosun particle is discovered via experiments involving the Large Hadron Collider.
• Whitney Houston, BeeGee Robin Gibb, Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, writers Nora Ephron, Gore Vidal and Maeve Binchy all leave us.
• So does Lonesome George, aka Solitario Jorge, the last male tortoise of his kind, on the Galapagos Islands, aged 102. RIP George.

It's been 15 years since...

Madeleine McCann: disappeared in 2007

• Steve Jobs launches the Apple iPhone, which cost $150 million to develop.
• Google launches Android, and Amazon releases the first Kindle.
• Al Gore’s environmental film An Inconvenient Truth wins Best Documentary at the Oscars; Helen Mirren gets Best Actress for The Queen.
• Gordon Brown replaces Tony Blair as British Prime Minister, as the housing bubble bursts and we all learn new words like credit crunch and subprime mortgage.
• In Portugal, a three-year-old British tourist, Madeleine McCann, vanishes from her holiday bedroom. She is never found.
• Hashtag and 3D printing enter the mainstream lexicon.
• A sheikh in Dubai makes the biggest charitable donation in history when he gives 7.41 billion euros to a Middle East education foundation.
• King of Pop Michael Jackson dies of an accidental overdose as he prepares for a comeback tour aged 50.
• Director Ingmar Bergman, writer Kurt Vonnegut, philosopher Jean Baudrillard, and singer Ike Turner also die. So does Joe Dolan.

It’s been 20 years since...

Britney Spears, left, is joined by boyfriend Justin Timberlake of the group N'Sync as they arrive for the 29th American Music Awards in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2002. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

• The Euro becomes official currency of the EU, in a year that sees 10 new countries join; nobody has yet heard of Brexit.
• Halle Berry becomes the first black woman to win Best Actress at the Oscars for her role in Monster’s Ball. She cries.
• A Nasa spacecraft discovers water on Mars.
• Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake break up, and Michael Jackson dangles one of his children off a hotel balcony in Berlin as the world looks on in alarm.
• The Osbournes reality show makes its MTV debut, catapulting the family – especially Mrs Osbourne – into the mainstream and revealing a rather more domesticated side to the Prince of Darkness.
• Apple release its second generation iPod with a then-whopping 20GB of storage, as Sanyo SCP-5300 becomes the first mobile phone with a built in camera, changing our lives forever.
• As Queen Elizabeth marks 50 years in charge, her mother and sister both die, aged 101 and 71.
• George W Bush gives his Axis of Evil speech and creates the Department of Homeland Security in response the 2001 Twin Towers attack.
• Former president Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Brazil wins the World Cup 2-0 against Germany in the final co-hosted by South Korea and Japan. Ronaldo – not that one – scores both goals.
• Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Dee Dee Ramone and Joe Strummer all die.
• A wholesale market selling live animals and live sea creatures in horrific conditions for killing and eating opens in Wuhan, China. What could possibly go wrong…

It’s been 25 years since...

• The Spice Girls rule the world, dominating the Brits with Ginger Spice in that Union Jack tea towel dress, planting a smooch on Prince Charles, meeting Nelson Mandela and releasing a second album that sells 7m copies in a fortnight.
• The first colour photo appears in the New York Times, and the DVD is launched in the US.
• In Japan the Toyota Prius – the world’s first hybrid car – is unveiled, and Pokemon (“Gotta catch ‘em all!”) is launched in Tokyo.
• The movie Titanic premieres, starring Kate and Leonardo and soundtracked by Celine Dion’s heart going on – it is the highest grossing film ever, until Avatar, also directed by James Cameron, comes along in 2010.
• Mary McAleese succeeds Mary Robinson as 8th president of Ireland, the first woman to succeed another woman as head of state. Bill Clinton is elected for a second term in the US, Tony Blair’s New Labour is elected in the UK, and in Serbia a future war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic, remains president.
• India and Pakistan celebrate 50 years of independence from the UK, and the oldest woman alive – Jeanne Calment, aged 122 years and 164 days, dies in Arles, Provence.
• Gianni Versace is murdered outside his villa in Miami.
• Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun famous for her charity work in Kolkata, dies aged 87, but her death is overshadowed by a fatal car crash in Paris which kills the son of the owner of Harrods and his travelling companion, Princess Diana. Diana’s funeral is watched by 2 billion people.
• The first Harry Potter book, from an unknown Scottish single parent, is published by Bloomsbury.
• The Hale Bopp comet flies close by planet Earth for the first time in 4,200 years, and we all get quite excited.
• Manchester United forward and food poverty activist Marcus Rashford is born. Rapper Notorious BIG, rocker Michael Hutchence, singer Jeff Buckley, Beat writer William S Burroughs, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, actors Robert Mitchum and James Stewart, and shop chain Woolworths all leave us.

It's been 50 years since...

• Intel invented the single chip microprocessor, which is a big deal apparently
• The last American troops leave Vietnam, but not before a pre-leotard Jane Fonda visits the communist North and earns herself the nickname Hanoi Jane.
• Everyone is watching The Godfather and The Poseidon Adventure, and reading The Joy of Sex, The Day of The Jackal, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Watership Down.
• Atari is launched with an investment of $250, and someone called Ray Tomlinson invents email.
• HBO is launched as the first subscription cable TV.
• Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger are named Time’s Men of the Year (it was not changed to Person of the Year until 1999), and serial killer Ted Bundy was appointed to the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Committee.
• Five people are arrested in connection with what will become the Watergate scandal.
• In Derry, 14 unarmed civil rights marchers are killed by the British Army, and 11 Israeli athletes are killed by Palestinian members of the group Black September during the Munich Olympics.
• In the US, the Equal Rights amendment legalises equality between men and women.
• Burt Reynolds poses nude for Cosmopolitan.
• In Sweden, four musicians form a group, using their initials as its name – ABBA.