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2012

The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II

6th February 2012 marked the 60th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (as well as the 60th anniversary of her becoming Head of Commonwealth). Celebrations were held in these countries to mark the occasion.

In June, there was an extra public holiday in the UK. Events were staged in London that included a concert and maritime parade of boats along the River Thames, in which up to 1,000 vessels participated (the largest flotilla to be seen on the river in 350 years), with a million people watching from the riverside.* Street parties took place around the country.

As of 2012, Queen Victoria was the only other monarch in the histories of Britain, Canada and a few other Commonwealth realms to have celebrated a Diamond Jubilee (in 1897).

 

london 2012 timeline of events diamond jubilee
Credit: Matt Gibson

 

 

Euro 2012 is held in Poland and Ukraine

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship was jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine. It was won by Spain, who beat Italy 4–0 in the final. Spain became the first team to win two consecutive European Championships, and also three straight major tournaments (Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012).*

 

euro 2012 poland ukraine fifa football goal line technology timeline

 

 

London hosts the Olympic Games

In 2012, London hosted the Summer Olympics for the third time in its history – the only city to have done so on this many occasions. The event took place amid the largest security operation ever seen in peacetime Europe. London had been transformed in recent years by a number of massive construction projects. In addition to the Olympic Games venues themselves, there was neighbouring Stratford City, a mixed use development with almost 11 million ft² of commercial floor space and community facilities. Work had also started on Crossrail, a £15 billion rail connection linking Heathrow Airport with the central and eastern parts of the city. Several new landmarks dominated the skyline, including the 87-storey Shard of Glass,* which became the tallest skyscraper in Europe (until surpassed by Mercury City Tower in Moscow) and the first to break the 1000 ft barrier.

 

london 2012 timeline of events
Credit: BaldBoris (CC BY 2.0)

 

 

Mars Science Laboratory explores the Red Planet

Mars Science Laboratory, known as Curiosity, was by far the largest and most powerful rover ever sent to Mars. Among its many instruments were the first video camera taken to another planet. As well as filming the surface, it also recorded the descent through the atmosphere, in HD quality. The rover also featured the first 3D camera on Mars. The mission had four main goals:

• to determine if life ever arose on Mars
• to characterise the climate of Mars
• to characterise the geology of Mars
• to prepare for human exploration

 

 

 

Voyager I crosses the heliopause

Launched in 1977, Voyager I's original mission was to visit the gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn. It was the first probe to obtain detailed images of these planets and their moons. By 1998, having travelled over 6.5 billion miles (10.4 billion km), it became the most distant human-made object ever sent into space, hurtling away from Earth at a speed greater than any other spacecraft. By 2003, it had entered the "termination shock", the point where solar wind particles slow down to subsonic speeds due to interactions with the local interstellar medium.

In 2013, NASA announced that Voyager 1 had crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space during the previous year, on 25th August 2012. This had originally been expected to happen in 2015 – but a new model of the heliopause, combined with fresh measurements of electron density, confirmed that it had indeed exited the Solar System three years early.*

The probe was expected to continue sending back signals until 2025 (along with its sister craft, Voyager II), before finally losing power from its generators and being unable to operate any instruments. It would enter the Oort Cloud in another 300 years, crossing that region after a period of 30,000 years, then passing the red dwarf AC+79 3888 in the year 42,000 AD.

 

Click to enlarge

voyager 1 future timeline

 

 

Windows 8 is released

Windows 8 featured a much faster startup, integrated web applications, improved support for digital media (including AVC HD and 3D video), faster resumes from low-power states, and support for both USB 3.0 and Bluetooth 3.0. It also included facial recognition (due to increasing use of webcams integrated into computers), which could log a user in automatically. There were substantial improvements for touch usage. In October 2013, Microsoft released the first major update, Windows 8.1. This addressed some aspects that were criticised by reviewers and early adopters. Mainstream support for the operating system was planned to run until 2018 and extended support until 2023.*

 

 

 

Quad-core smartphones and tablets

The first quad-core smartphones and tablets were released in 2012, offering a major boost in processing power. This new generation included the Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC Edge, HTC Zeta, HTC Quattro tablet and the Asus Transformer Prime.**

 

2012 quad core phones tablets samsung galaxy s3 htc iphone 5 ipad 3

 

 

Nintendo launches the Wii U

The Wii U was the first of the 8th generation games consoles, the others being the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, both launched in 2013. The Wii U featured gameplay in full 1080p resolution, up to 32GB of flash-based memory for storing game saves, a touch tablet controller with built-in camera, and game discs with 25GB content using a Nintendo-proprietary format based on that of Blu-ray Discs. It was backward compatible with Wii software.*

 

wii u 2012 technology timeline
Credit: Takimata (CC BY-SA 1.0)

 

 

The Abraj Al-Bait Towers are completed in Mecca

Also known as the Mecca Royal Hotel Clock Tower, this became the second tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.* It consisted of seven different towers, with the Hotel Tower, the tallest, soaring to a height of 601 m (1,972 ft).

Built by the Saudi Binladin Group, Saudi Arabia's largest construction company, it cost over $15 billion and took almost eight years to complete. Along with its place among the world's tallest, Abraj Al-Bait held the record for largest habitable floor area at 16,150,000 sq ft (1,500,000 sq m). The hotel tower and its signature clock also broke records for the tallest hotel, tallest clock tower and largest clock face.

The complex was built to model the Islamic architecture of the old city and was located adjacent to the mosque Masjid al-Haram, Islam's most holy site and home to the Kaaba. It would serve to accommodate the enormous number of pilgrims and worshippers visiting the site – easing stresses on the city during the Hajj when millions of Muslims arrived as part of the pilgrimage. The towers could hold up to 100,000 people, with a large prayer room for up to 10,000. The complex also boasted a five-story shopping mall, heliports, residential areas, conference and business rooms, an Islamic Museum and a lunar observatory used to sight the Moon during holy months.

The tower sparked a global outcry during its development, however. The site was previously occupied by the historic Ajyad Fortress, an Ottoman castle built in 1781 that was demolished to make way for its construction.* The new tower received further criticism for its dominating stature over the rest of the city and its out of place modern appearance.

 

abraj al bait 2012 timeline
Credit: AHMAD FAIZAL YAHYA

 

 

The Mayan calendar reaches the end of its current cycle

The Mayans were an ancient people that lived thousands of years ago in what is now Central America. They are noted for having the only fully-developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas – as well as its art, architecture, mathematical and astronomical systems. As part of their culture, the Mayans used a Long Count calendar. This identified a particular date by counting the number of days from a starting date, which is calculated to have been 11th August 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar. A b'ak'tun was the longest unit of measurement in this system and was equivalent to 144,000 days (394 years). When correlated with the modern Western calendar it can be shown that the 13th b'ak'tun ended on 21st December 2012. This date generated a huge amount of publicity, with many gullible people expecting the end of the world, or a transformative event of some kind. This was despite no record of the Mayans themselves believing that any such event would occur.*

 

2012 timeline end of world

 

 

 

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References

1 Thames Diamond Jubilee River Pageant, The Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/the_queens_diamond_jubilee/9309497/
Accessed 14th December 2013.

2 UEFA Euro 2012, Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_2012
Accessed 14th December 2013.

3 A guide to the Shard, London's tallest building. - The Shard, London, ShardLDN:
http://www.shardldn.com/
Accessed 24th December 2013.

4 It's Official: Voyager 1 Is Now In Interstellar Space, Universe Today:
http://www.universetoday.com/104717/its-official-voyager-1-is-now-in-interstellar-space/
Accessed 30th December 2013.

5 Windows lifecycle fact sheet, Microsoft:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet
Accessed 31st December 2017.

6 Samsung Galaxy S3 to be quad-core mind blower?, techradar:
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/
Accessed 24th November 2011.

7 iPhone 5 rumours: what you need to know, techradar:
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/
Accessed 24th November 2011.

8 Wii U, Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_U
Accessed 14th December 2013.

9 World's Tallest Buildings 2012, SkyscraperPage:
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=200
Accessed 29th July 2012.

10 Saudis hit back over Mecca castle, BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1748711.stm
Accessed 29th July 2012.

11 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?, NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html
Accessed 26th October 2010.

 

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