2:26 pm, December 31, 2020
2020 will go down as a year like no other. Brexit, Captain Tom, the US presidential election and a worldwide pandemic – just one of those would probably occur in a normal year, but 2020 was no normal year.
As the clock counts down to a new year, we thought we’d look back at just some of the stories that broke over during 2020 and we covered here at Car Dealer – whether in-full or in our popular daily news round-ups.
Scroll through the pictures below and you’ll probably agree with us it’s hard to believe so much happened in just 12 months.
Happy New Year from the Car Dealer team.
The Union flag being taken down outside the European Parliament in Brussels, January 31, 2020
Boris Johnson put the UK in full lockdown on March 23. It was supposed to be for three weeks but it was extended, and since then there have been further lockdowns. This scene in London’s Oxford Street in March was repeated across hundreds of city centres across the UK.
No Time To Die, Daniel Craig’s 007 swansong, was the first major blockbuster to be delayed. Its April release was pushed back to November, and then again to April 2021. Other films pushed from 2020 included sci-fi epic Dune, action sequel Top Gun: Maverick, Marvel tentpole Black Widow, horror flick A Quiet Place Part II and Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Romain Grosjean crashed his Haas F1 car at the the Bahrain Grand Prix in November. The 34-year-old said that he feared for his life as he struggled to get out of his car, which burst into flames after colliding head on into safety barriers at 137mph shortly after the start of the race.
In July, the Queen knighted Captain Sir Tom Moore during a ceremony at Windsor Castle. Moore raised over £32.7m for the NHS.
Freight lorries lined up at Manston Airport in Kent in December, as the border between the UK and France was shut by the French due to a new strain of coronavirus. The airport’s runway was turned into a refuge for some 5,000 lorries.
A car salesman talks to a customer from behind a protective screen at Motorpoint showroom in Oldbury, West Midlands, as car showrooms opened for the first time on June 1 following the national lockdown.
Joe Biden crossed the 270 votes needed to win the US presidential election. He was formally elected as the next president of the United States by the electoral college in December.
A herd of goats taking advantage of quiet streets near Trinity Square, in Llandudno on March 31.
Arguably Britain’s greatest ever racing driver, Sir Stirling Moss, died at the age of 90 in April. Other famous faces to have sadly passed away in 2020 include Sir Sean Connery, Dame Vera Lynn, Kirk Douglas, Caroline Flack, Bobby Ball and Geoffrey Palmer.
On June 7, Black Lives Matters protesters pulled down a statue of 17th Century slave trader Edward Colston and pushed it into Bristol harbour.
BA’s Queen of the Skies depart from Heathrow in final flights in October. More than 18,000 people watched the last two operational 747s take off on BA’s livestream of the event.
The James Atherton in New Brighton, the Wirral, renamed itself ‘The Three Bellends’ in October. The sign appeared as pubs were forced to close in the Liverpool area as part of the three-tier system of coronavirus restrictions in England.
2020 will go down as the year of the video call. In June, the Queen took part in her first ever official video conference call – the monarch chatted online to carers from Windsor Castle.
Or perhaps 2020 was the year of the furlough scheme. It was introduced in March was supposed to end in October. However, it’s now been extended to April 2021. For in-depth furlough coverage on Car Dealer, click here.
Former PMs Theresa May and David Cameron congratulated current prime minister Boris Johnson for securing a landmark trade deal with the EU in December.
Nursing staff at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and joining Clap for Carers.
A toilet roll aisle in a supermarket at the height of the first national lockdown. It was a scene repeated in hundreds of supermarkets across the country as the public stock-piled items like toilet roll, pasta and hand gel.
A small and intimate service to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain was held at Westminster Abbey during the summer. Other anniversaries that were carried out on a toned-down scale were VE Day and VJ Day.
Dominic Cummings holding a press conference in the garden of No. 10 Downing Street amid anger at his lockdown journey to Barnard Castle.
Trump waved to supporters from the back seat of an armoured SUV in October, sparking outrage he’d put his advisors and security staff inside the car at risk of Covid-19. Just days before Trump was in hospital with coronavirus.
And, ending on some good news, Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first person to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine in December.
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