Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo:

October 2021 has not, so far, been an uneventful month. Extremely high-stakes, if opaque, negotiations continue in Washington over a massive infrastructure bill and Democrats’ massive social-spending bill. COVID continues to wreak havoc. And then there’s the rise of the espresso martini.

But all this is small potatoes compared to what was going down a year ago. Any October before an election is frenzied, but 2020 had two unusual factors going for it in the newsworthiness sweepstakes: a pre-vaccine global pandemic and Donald J. Trump. Let’s travel back in time to the not-so-distant past and revisit the five craziest news items in a disorientingly eventful month.