Before ringing in the new year, we're reflecting on 2021 and the events in Southern California that made us laugh, cry, cheer with unbridled joy and sigh in disbelief and frustration over the past 12 months.
Some seem like they could have happened yesterday. Others may have already faded into the haze that builds as the months pass.
Below, a timeline of some of the notable events that were part of what defined 2021 in Southern California.
January
Jan. 7: Dodgers legend Tommy Lasorda dies at age 93.
The series, The Mandalorian, continues to capture audiences, but we spotted a local Mandalorian who is building his own fan base on the streets of LA. NBC4's Hetty Chang and photojournalist Sean Browning report Jan. 17, 2021.
Jan. 20: Alex Padilla becomes the first Latino to represent California in the U.S Senate.
March 14: Beyoncé wins her 28th Grammy, more than any other female artist.
March 16: Two people are killed in a powerful fireworks blast that rattled an Ontario neighborhood.
At least two people were killed in the explosions and the neighborhood was evacuated. Hetty Chang and Gil Leyvas reported on NBC4 News on Tuesday, March 16, 2021.
March 31: Four people, including a 9-year-old boy, are killed in a shooting at an Orange office park. The suspected shooter is later charged with murder.
April
April 3: In the semifinal against Gonzaga, UCLA was on the precipice of an upset before Jalen Suggs hit a buzzer-beater from half court to knock the Bruins out of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
April 9: The World Series champion Dodgers play in front of a crowd after a season without fans in the stadium due to the pandemic.
April 26: The petition to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom collects enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
April 30: Disneyland reopens after a more than year-long closure due to the pandemic.
The happiest place on earth has reopened on both sides of Harbor Boulevard, inside the park, but also outside where businesses are reopening. Vikki Vargas reports for NBC4 News at 4 p.m. on April 30, 2021.
May 21: The search begins for a shooter who opened fire at another car on the 55 Freeway in Orange County, killing 6-year-old Aiden Leos. A man and woman are later arrested and charged in the road rage shooting.
June 1: Bear sightings aren't unusual in San Gabriel Valley foothill communities. What happened after this dog mom encountered a mama bear on a backyard wall is a wild animal encounter to remember.
Surveillance video footage shows a teen in Southern California shoving a bear off a low wall behind her house to protect her four dogs over the Memorial Day weekend.
June 4: A federal judge overturns California’s ban on assault weapons.
June 18: California announces a system that provides a digital copy of residents’ COVID vaccination cards.
Forty cows escaped from a meat packing plant and stampeded through a neighborhood. Michelle Valles reports for Today in LA at 6 a.m.
June 30: A powerful explosion during a bomb squad illegal fireworks disposal operation goes horribly wrong in a South Los Angeles neighborhood. Seventeen people are injured and nearby homes and businesses are damaged in the blast caused by an overloaded bomb squad detonation chamber.
A fireworks blast hurt 17 people during a seizure by law enforcement in South LA. Kim Baldonado reports for the NBC4 News on Thursday, July 1, 2021.
July
July 1: The Los Angeles City Council passes restrictions on homeless encampments in certain parts of the city.
Joe Kelly traded his Dodgers jersey for a mariachi jacket. Video broadcast Thursday July 1, 2021 on the NBC4 News at 11 a.m.
July 11: Lake Mead, a significant part of California’s water supply system, reaches critically low levels.
July 19: One month after California lifted most pandemic restrictions, allowing many businesses to reopen, LA County announces a mask requirement for indoor public spaces.
July 23: Southern California athletes compete in the Tokyo Olympics after the global event was delayed for a year due to the pandemic.
July 27: Nineteen-year-old TikTok star Anthony Barajas and friend Rylee Goodrich, 18, are shot in a Corona movie theater. Goodrich dies at the scene. Barajas dies later a hospital. A man is charged in connection with the attack.
August
Aug. 6: The Southern California team of April Ross and Alix Klineman win beach volleyball gold in Tokyo. The Olympics is their first as a team.
Aug. 7: Seventeen years after winning her first medal at age 18 in Athens, Los Angeles' Allyson Felix wins her 11th to become the most decorated American in U.S. Olympics history.
After winning the women’s 4x400m relay on Saturday, the 35-year-old track star surpassed Carl Lewis’s record of 10 medals.
Aug. 14: SoFi Stadium in Inglewood opens to fans for the first time.
Aug. 16: LAUSD students return to classroom learning for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
Aug. 26: Three U.S. Marines from Southern California are among the American service members killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, a Norco High School graduate, Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Riverside, and Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, from Rancho Cucamonga are killed in a suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
September
Sept. 7: In a sight that has become too familiar in 2021, a flight crew is confronted by an unruly -- and growling -- passenger. Video shows what happened on the American Airlines flight from LAX to Salt Lake City.
A man was arrested after becoming belligerent on a flight from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. The outbursts were captured by another passenger on the flight. American Airlines issued a statement saying the police were called to the plane to remove the man after landing.
Sept. 9: Officials order that all public school students 12 and older in Los Angeles must be vaccinated by January to enter campus.
Sept. 14: Gov. Gavin Newsom soundly defeats the recall effort against him.
Sept. 20: George Holliday, who recorded the beating of Rodney King from the balcony of his apartment in 1991, dies due to complications from COVID.
Sept 27: Mona Rodriguez, 18, is shot by a school safety officer in Long Beach. Rodriguez, a passenger in a car at the time, later dies at a hospital. The officer is charged in connection with the shooting.
The Los Angeles district attorney announced the murder charge after the shooting was caught on camera in September. John Cadiz Klemack reports Oct. 27, 2021
Sept. 30: Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a bill to help transfer a Manhattan Beach property to descendants of a Black couple stripped of their resort amid racist harassment a century ago.
Oct. 2: An oil spill from a broken offshore pipeline fouls the water off the coast of Newport Beach.
Oct. 13: President Biden announces that the Port of Los Angeles will operate around the clock to alleviate supply chain problems.
Oct. 21: Hollywood mourns cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, killed when a prop gun being used by actor/producer Alec Baldwin discharges on a New Mexico film set.
The LAPD released an image of the jetpack man seen over LAX. Eric Leonard reports for the NBC4 News on Monday, Nov. 1, 2021.
Nov. 3: An unusual chase involving a stolen big rig went on for about eight hours through three Southern California counties before ending in a freeway standoff.
Nov. 12: A Los Angeles judge terminates the conservatorship that had governed Britney Spears life for 13 years.
Nov. 18: Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani wins the AL MVP award after one of the most amazing seasons in MLB history.
December
Dec. 1: Los Angeles philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, wife of famed entertainment exec Clarence Avant, is shot and killed at the couple's Beverly Hills home. A suspect is arrested hours later in Hollywood after accidentally shooting himself in the foot.
Dec. 2: The first case of the coronavirus omicron variant is detected in Los Angeles County. Case numbers rise in an early winter surge.
Dec. 12: Mexican singer Vicente Fernández, one of Mexico's most recognizable and cultural icons, dies at age 81.
Mexican singer and actor Vicente Fernández, known as “the King of the Rancheras” is dead at 81.
Dec. 23: A 14-year-old girl in a dressing room is struck and killed by a stray bullet during a chaotic confrontation between police and a man who was attacking people inside a Burlington store in North Hollywood.
Baseball Hall of Fame player and manager, Tommy Lasorda, poses during a 1980 Los Angeles, California, photo portrait session at Dodger Stadium. Lasorda managed the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1976 to 1996. He died on Jan. 7, 2021.(Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)
Getty
A mural depicting Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna by artist Mr Brainwash is seen in Los Angeles. Jan. 26, 2021 marks the one year anniversary of the tragic helicopter crash which led to the death of nine people, including Bryant and his daughter Gianna. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)
Getty/NASA
In this handout image provided by NASA, members of NASA’s Perseverance rover team react in mission control after receiving confirmation the spacecraft successfully touched down on Mars, , February 18, 2021 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.
Wally Skalij | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
LA County Sheriff’s officers investigate an accident involving golfer Tiger Woods along Hawthorne Blvd. in Rancho Palos Verdes, Feb. 23, 2021. Woods made his triumphant return to golf in December 2021, after a long road to recovery after the accident.
Dr. Tomas Aragon, State Public Health Officer and California Department of Public Health Director, takes part in a vaccination event at the RingCentral Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, March 11, 2021 -- the one year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic -- to highlight the then-new, one-dose Janssen COVID-19 vaccine by Johnson & Johnson. The event was part of the state’s efforts to increase vaccine acceptance among groups that are less likely to be vaccinated. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)
Harry How
The Los Angeles Dodgers lineup in front of socially distanced filled stadium before the game against the Washington Nationals during the 2021 MLB season home opening game at Dodger Stadium on April 09, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
In an aerial view, the San Gabriel River and the exposed lakebed of the San Gabriel Reservoir are seen in the third week of spring as another year of drought develops throughout the West, on April 8, 2021 in the San Gabriel Mountains near Azusa, California. Precipitation was extremely low in Los Angeles County during the winter of 2021, with no measurable rain recorded in downtown Los Angeles during the month of February, which is the height of the rainy season. As native vegetation grew drier and more flammable each month, fire officials expected another devastating season of massive wildfires. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Park visitors got emotional inside Disneyland as the theme park reopened for the first time in more than a year on Friday, April 30, 2021. The reopening of Disneyland, which was shut down in March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “is a monumental day for Anaheim,” city spokesman Mike Lyster said. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
NBCLA
A year after COVID-19 put ceremonies for the class of 2020 on hold, USC 2020 and 2021 graduates prepared for a pandemic-adjusted, but in-person, commencement. The school held multiple, smaller ceremonies from May 14 to May 20, 2021.
Leos Family
Aiden Leos, pictured in this undated photo provided by his family, was killed in a road rage car-to-car shooting on the 55 Freeway on May 21, 2021. His death set off community-wide mourning and outrage, with local businesses donating thousands of dollars in reward money for information leading to the killers. Two suspects were arrested and charged in the death of the 6-year-old boy.
A security camera captured a devoted dog mom’s wild standoff with a protective mama bear in the back yard of a San Gabriel Valley home over Memorial Day weekend, 2021. Fearing for her dogs’ safety, a teen girl joined the fray after hearing frantic barks. The encounter went viral online.
NBC 7
Gov. Gavin Newsom selects 15 vaccinated Californians to receive $50,000, on Friday, June 4, 2021, as part of the state’s “Vax for the Win” vaccination incentive program.
NBCLA
Illegal fireworks that were seized in South LA exploded during transport on June 30, 2021. The containment truck used to contain the explosives was overloaded, and could not contain the force of the blast, which bomb squad technicians vastly underestimated when loading the vehicle. The explosion shattered windows, sent debris throughout the neighborhood, and displaced some residents for months.
AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
A sign advises shoppers to wear masks outside of a store Monday, July 19, 2021, in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles. Los Angeles County reinstated an indoor mask mandate due to rising COVID-19 cases, just a few weeks after California lifted most pandemic restrictions. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
OnScene
Cows are seen in a Pico Rivera neighborhood Tuesday June 23, 2021, after breaking free from a slaughterhouse and making an escape attempt. Only one cow managed to escape slaughter, and found a new home at Southland Farm Sanctuary.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris pose for photographs with the 2020 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the East Room of the White House on July 02, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays to win the championship series at the end of an abbreviated season due to the coronavirus. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images
Team USA gold medalists pose on the podium after winning the Women’s Gold Medal match between Spain and the United States on day fifteen of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Tatsumi Water Polo Centre on Aug. 7, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. A grand total of 63 of Team USA's 113 medals at the Tokyo Olympics were won by athletes with ties to Southern California.
NBCLA
Hundreds of people joined a hike Sunday Aug. 29, 2021 in memory of Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, a 2019 Norco High School graduate. Nikoui was one of 13 service members killed while helping people evacuate Afghanistan when the Taliban took over Kabul, ending the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
Gov. Gavin Newsom addresses a crowd in Sacramento, Calif., on Tuesday night, Sept. 14, 2021. Newsom defeated an attempt to oust him from office in a recall election, overcoming Republican criticism of COVID-19 restrictions that shuttered schools and businesses.
Gettyt
Randy Duncan leaves flowers in support of the Bruce Family and George Floyd at Bruce’s Beach on April 20, 2021 in Manhattan Beach, California. – The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to return a valuable parcel of land to the descendants of a Black couple, Willa and Charles Bruce, who once operated a beach resort before it and additional land owned by Black families was taken via eminent domain in the 1920s only to sit vacant for decades. A county lifeguard training center is operated on the parcel of land once owned by the Bruce family. (Photo by Patrick T. FALLON / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Mario Tama/Getty Images
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 03: Oil is washed up on Huntington State Beach after a 126,000-gallon oil spill from an offshore oil platform on October 3, 2021 in Huntington Beach, California. The spill forced the closure of the popular Great Pacific Airshow with authorities urging people to avoid beaches in the vicinity. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
LAPD
An LAPD photo reveals a Jack Skellington balloon that may have been the explanation behind an ongoing mystery near LAX. Multiple pilots reported seeing a mysterious "jetpack man" in the skies over Los Angeles, starting in 2020 and with the most recent sighting in July 2021. NBC4's I-Team uncovered what may have been the cause.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Supporters of the “Free Britney” movement rally in support of musician Britney Spears outside the Stanley Mosk courthouse in Los Angeles, California, Nov. 12, 2021. – A Los Angeles judge on Friday formally approved the process of ending the controversial guardianship that has controlled Spears’ life for the past 13 years.
Mario Tama/Getty Images (File)
A person wearing a face covering walks past a white flag memorial installation outside Griffith Observatory honoring the Los Angeles County residents who have died from COVID-19 on Nov. 18, 2021, in Los Angeles, California.
NBCLA
Read it and weep: Gas prices at some SoCal stations were even higher than the statewide, record-high prices per gallon in mid-November.
NBCLA
A shattered glass door is pictured after robberies in Burbank early Friday Dec. 3, 2021. Locations all around Southern California were hit by burglaries and smash-and-grab robberies towards the end of the year, in a sudden crime spike.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 03: People who arrived on international flights wait to be tested on the first day of a new rapid COVID-19 testing site for arriving international passengers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on December 3, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. The free voluntary tests are being offered to arriving passengers in the Tom Bradley International Terminal by the Los Angeles County Department of Health after the county confirmed its first case of the Omicron variant December 2. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
NBCLA
NewsChopper4 Alpha captures crews removing the iconic Staples Center lettering and logos from the outside of the stadium on Dec. 6, to make way for its new identity as the Crypto.com Arena.
Mexican singer Vicente Fernandez performs at AmericanAirlines Arena on October 10, 2010 in Miami, Florida. The icon, El Rey, died on Dec. 12. (Photo by Olivia Salazar/WireImage)
