Quebec City, Canada. Two men enter a mosque and open fire with AK-47s. Six people are killed and eight are injured. Police intervene, and after a chase, the killer is arrested.

Women can vote in 193 of the world’s 195 nations. There was only one nation in 1893 (New Zealand).

There are 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world. There were 64,000 in 1986.

Leaded gasoline is permitted in only three countries worldwide. There were 193 in 1986.

Worldwide, smartphones are sold at nearly 1.5 billion, while cell phones excluding smartphones are 450 million.

The study, published by Christian Schmidt, Tobias Krauth, and Stephen Wagner, finds that 88-95% of all plastic waste in the oceans originating from rivers comes from just 10 countries, 8 in Asia and 2 in Africa. The United States, which accounts for 25% of the global economy, contributes less than 1% of the plastic in the oceans, while China accounts for 28%.

Harvard, Boston, Massachusetts. Ranga Dias and Isaac Silvera compressed hydrogen between two diamonds at 495 GPa at -268°C, claiming to have created metallic hydrogen. Metallic hydrogen is thought to be superfluid and superconductive, and five times more efficient than liquid hydrogen as a propellant. The two Harvard scientists believe they have produced metallic hydrogen (like that believed to be present deep inside Jupiter, for example). Their feat, which has eluded physicists for more than 80 years, would mark a huge leap forward in high-pressure physics, not only because it demonstrates a new fundamental property of the most abundant element in the universe, but because the metallic form is predicted to remain a superconductor at room temperature. If this turns out to be true, and an efficient means of producing it can be devised, applied uses for metallic hydrogen could include superconductors and space travel. However, several doubts have subsequently arisen, even from the two scientists themselves: it is not at all clear whether the shiny material the researchers see is actually hydrogen; it could be alumina (aluminum oxide), which coats the diamond tips in the anvil and could behave differently under pressure. In June 2019, however, a team from the CEA (Commission for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies) claimed to have created metallic hydrogen at approximately 425 GPa using a toroidal diamond anvil cell produced using electron beam machining.

The ALPHA experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva recorded the spectrum of an antihydrogen atom for the first time. The spectrum was confirmed to be identical to that of hydrogen, as predicted by the CPT (Charge, Parity, Spin, Time) inversion theory.

Berlin. A truck carrying a Tunisian man crashes into crowds at the Christmas market. The Polish driver, killed by the Tunisian, is found inside. Twelve people die on the road, and 48 are injured.

Türkiye. Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov is assassinated live on TV by a former policeman crying vengeance for Aleppo.

Syria. Aleppo is completely conquered by government forces supported by Russian forces.

peculiar supermoon (perigee full moon). The diameter of the full Moon is 14% larger than average, the largest of the 21st century, and the satellite is 30% brighter, thanks to the coincidence of its perigee with the full Moon. The next similar event is November 25, 2034, and the previous one was January 26, 1948. This is also a rather low perigee (356,509 km): only on January 14, 1930 was there another similar one (356,397 km), and the next will be January 1, 2257 (356,371 km).

Republican Donald Trump surprisingly won the American elections, with 290 electoral votes against Hillary Clinton’s 232.

Iraq. Mosul is under siege by regular Iraqi troops supported by the Americans.

Barack Obama, still president of the United States, is the editor of a special issue of Wired magazine, a Silicon Valley icon, dedicated to science fiction, which he is an avid reader. In the editorial, he writes: “The next time you’re bombarded with exaggerated claims that our nation is doomed or that the world is falling apart, don’t listen to the doomsayers. The truth is this: If you had to choose, in all of human history, the best time to be alive, you would choose now. Here, in America, right now.”

Two earthquakes measuring 5.5 and 6.1 on the Richter scale hit the same region of Amatrice as in August. This time, there were no casualties.

AT&T buys Time Warner for $85 billion.

There are 205 nations in the world that participate in the Olympics. There were 14 in 1896.

Worldwide, 2,550,000 scientific articles are published annually. In 2000, they were half that number. And in 1665, they were only 119.

The death penalty is permitted in 89 out of 195 nations worldwide. There were 193 in 1900.

Worldwide, the percentage of land protected as national parks, nature reserves, or nature reserves is 14.7%. It was 0.03% in 1900.

Worldwide, the percentage of children who die before their fifth birthday is 4%. It was 44% in 1800, and 40% in 1900.

Solar panels cost $0.60/watt-hour. They cost $66/watt-hour in 1976.

Worldwide, only 6,000 tons of oil are lost at sea. In 1980, the figure was 636,000 tons per year.

Kirkuk, Iraq. ISIS, under attack in Mosul, counterattacks with commandos in Kirkuk, in Kurdish territory. Eighty people die. The Peshmerga intervene, and fighting continues for several hours. North of the city, three suicide bombers attack a power plant, killing 13 workers, including four Iranians, and then detonate their own bombs. A total of 56 jihadists are killed.

The European Mars probe Gas Trace Orbiter, equipped with Italian instruments to study methane emissions, successfully enters Martian orbit and releases the European Schiaparelli probe, with 34% Italian technological contribution, which attempts to land on Mars. The atmospheric entry is successful, as are the heat shield detachment and parachute deployment. The probe is detached, and the rockets are fired to slow the fall, but the computer shuts them down too early. The probe falls several hundred meters and crashes at approximately 300 km/h. The impact is captured by the American Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe.

The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding $14 billion from Deutsche Bank for toxic derivatives traded between 2005 and 2007. In a similar case, Goldman Sachs has settled for $5.1 billion. JP Morgan and Citigroup have also already paid significant sums.

NASA’s Osiris-REx probe is launched toward the asteroid Bennu. Osiris stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, and Osiris is also a deity associated with life, fertility, death, and resurrection. Bennu is a bird, symbolizing birth and resurrection. The probe is from Lockheed Martin, is powered by hydrazine, and the sample retrieval system is guided by an Artificial Intelligence system. It is the third mission of the New Frontiers program (after New Horizons to Pluto and Juno to Jupiter, the fourth is expected to be a nuclear-powered drone to explore Titan’s lakes).

Brazil. The Senate, with a vote of 61 in favor and 20 against, finalized the removal of the former Brazilian president after the impeachment proceedings began: Michel Temer is the new president of Brazil. Rousseff has been in trouble since at least 2014, when her party—the center-left Workers’ Party, which has governed since 2003—was heavily implicated in the Petrobras corruption case. Rousseff has never been personally investigated, but many have accused her, among other things, of not doing enough to combat corruption within her party and government and of implementing economic policies that led Brazil into recession. In October 2015, the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), the equivalent of the Italian Court of Auditors, declared that the 2014 state budget presented by Rousseff’s government had been “rigged” to conceal the country’s truly dire economic situation, thereby influencing the presidential campaign in which Rousseff was subsequently re-elected. It was the first time since 1937 that the state budget had been rejected. The impeachment proceedings began in December 2015 and continued despite Rousseff’s several appeals to the Brazilian Supreme Court.

North of Aleppo, Syria. Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, spokesman for the caliphate (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), and the organization’s number two, is killed in an airstrike. He had a $5 million reward on his head. The Russians and the Americans, both operating in the area with Su-34s and drones, respectively, dispute responsibility for the operation.

Charleroi, Belgium. A machete-wielding attacker, shouting “Allahu Akhbar!”, wounds two policewomen, one of them Muslim. She, wounded in the face, manages to shoot him dead.

Rouen, Normandy. Priest Jacques Hamel, 85, was slaughtered while celebrating Mass in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray during a kidnapping carried out by two Islamic extremists in his parish. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. One of the attackers was under surveillance and wearing an electronic bracelet. The two attackers were killed by French special forces.

Afghanistan. Islamic State (aka IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) leader Hafiz Saeed Khan is killed by a US drone strike in Nangharhar province, during a joint operation with Afghan forces.

Kabul. Eighty people were killed and more than 200 were injured in an attack claimed by ISIS and carried out by a suicide bomber during a large demonstration in Kabul. A violent explosion rocked the city in broad daylight in the streets of the Dehmazang neighborhood, where thousands of members of Afghanistan’s Hazara community, a Persian-speaking ethnic group of Shiite faith, were demonstrating. The demonstration was organized by the Enlightening Movement to pressure President Ashraf Ghani’s government to maintain an ambitious electricity transmission project (Tutap) in the impoverished province of Bamyan, whose transit has instead been relocated to another part of the country.

Munich. An 18-year-old German-Iranian shoots at a McDonald’s and then at a shopping mall. He kills nine people and then commits suicide.

Nice. A large truck, traveling at about 80 km/h for several hundred meters, plowed into a crowd leaving the July 14th fireworks display at 10:30 PM on Thursday evening along the famous Promenade des Anglais, the seafront promenade. During the zigzag course to hit as many people as possible, the driver fired machine gun fire. Eighty people died, many of them children. More than a hundred people were injured, 42 of them seriously.

The American Juno probe enters orbit around Jupiter. A problem will then be encountered that will prevent it from circularizing its orbit, but most of its scientific objectives will still be achieved, including stunning unedited photographs of the king of the planets’ poles.

Baghdad, Iraq. A car bomb claimed by ISIS overnight killed 200 people and injured 250. The attack occurred shortly after midnight during the holy month of Ramadan, when people are in the markets. Many of the people inside the mall were burned or suffocated by the blast.

Elon Musk’s Tesla announces that each of its new vehicles will be equipped with all the necessary hardware for autonomous driving.

Orlando, Florida. 2:00 a.m. Omar Mateen, an American with an Afghan father, carries out a massacre with an automatic rifle in a gay nightclub, killing 49 and wounding 53. At 5:00 a.m., SWAT special forces enter in a vehicle, crashing through a wall. A brief firefight ensues, and Mateen is killed. In a 911 call before the attack, he had praised ISIS.

Brazil. The Senate votes to impeach President Dilma Rousseff for 180 days. The impeachment request is based on several factors, including Dilma’s manipulation of public finances to hide a deficit in the state budget and thus secure re-election in 2014. Besides the recession, the other real sword of Damocles hanging over Brasilia is the major corruption investigation stemming from bribery at the state-owned oil company Petrobras. This investigation affects not only former President Lula da Silva, who as of today returns to being an ordinary citizen under investigation by the Curitiba prosecutor’s office, but also members of the nascent governing majority.

Sadiq Khan officially became London’s first Muslim mayor, winning the election with 56.8% of the vote. His victory marked the return of Labour to the capital after eight years. The son of Pakistani immigrants and a human rights lawyer, Khan, 45, a Labour member, won by a wide margin over Conservative lawyer Zac Goldsmith.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin (Amazon) completes its third suborbital flight with the same reusable rocket, launches the capsule that reenters by parachute, and the New Shepard rocket re-enters, landing vertically in West Texas on its intended landing pad. Jeff Bezos is wearing his cowboy boots with the inscription “Gradatum Ferociter” (step by step, ferociously).

Palmyra, Syria. Government troops, supported by Russian air forces, retake the city of Palmyra and the Roman ruins, which they had seized from retreating ISIS.