Global News What Happened To...?

On Dec. 9 2012, video of a baby monkey running around in a faux-shearling coat at a North York IKEA garnered international attention when Darwin escaped a locked crate and vehicle before making a dash toward the furniture store. “(I thought) this is absolutely ridiculous that there would be a monkey wearing clothes, walking around in Canada in the middle of winter. It just doesn't make any sense w...

Elias Tarabay remembers Aug. 4, 2020, clearly. He arrived home after having a late lunch with a friend. He was living in Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. His house had a balcony that looked out at the city’s ports. Just as he settled in, he heard a loud explosion. Tarabay was working as an editor for a local newspaper at the time and he thought he would take the video to send back to his offic...

Elliott Price attended the Montreal Expos' first home game on April 14, 1969 at Jarry Park. "There was a lot of worry because it snowed significantly during that week in April 1969, and it was a makeshift field, as well, and they were worried about what kind of, you know, will they be able to play the game?" Price said. "And lo and behold, April 14, 1969, the sun came out and was 72 degrees Fahren...

Devon Harris always had a passion for sport and dreamed of competing in the Olympics as a teenager. He spent his childhood in Haughton, a rural district in Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica, but moved to Olympic Gardens in Kingston, Jamaica. "The thing that I would say kept me sane was school. I loved school. ... I loved to play and guess where I could play? At school. So I discovered sports. ... The thing...

As a former multiple-franchiser owner, Alan Payne is familiar with Blockbuster; he had owned over 40 stores in Alaska and Texas. Early on, however, Payne said he noticed issues with how the company had been operating. At its peak, there were over 9,000 Blockbuster stores around the world and many of the stores were corporately owned. While it appeared that Blockbuster was growing, Payne said he id...

In March 2012, a 30-minute film produced by U.S.-based not-for-profit Invisible Children and narrated by co-founder Jason Russell, aimed to shed light on Joseph Kony, the leader of the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). He was the target of the Kony 2012 campaign led by Invisible Children, which garnered international attention. Before Invisible Children existed, in 2003, Russe...

On this episode of the Global News podcast What happened to…? Erica Vella finds out what happened to viral video, Kony 2012, which aimed to shed light on the Ugandan militant who founded the Lord’s Resistance Army. Dominic Akena grew up in a small village in Patongo, Uganda; his childhood was spent outside playing with other children in his village. In 2001, when Akena was seven years old, he reme...

On April 15, 2019, the world watched with despair as a fire ripped through Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The flames began just before 7 p.m. local time and spread rapidly throughout one of Europe’s most well-known structures. By 7:40 p.m., the fire had spread to the spire, which collapsed just before 8 p.m. Firefighters worked diligently to save the towers and to keep a bell from collapsing, but...

In 2011, a 90-second video launched Ted Williams, a man who was experiencing homelessness, as an international celebrity. In the video, Williams was standing at the side of a road in Columbus, Ohio; he was holding a sign that read in part, “I have a God-given gift of voice.” Doral Chenoweth, a photojournalist with The Columbus Dispatch -- a daily newspaper based in Ohio – took the video. Chenoweth...

Moufida Holubeshen and her husband John Holubeshen have long been passionate about beekeeping; the couple has three hives of their own at their home in Nanaimo, B.C. In 2019, Moufida recalled an email that sparked her attention; several sightings of large hornets had led officials to believe there was a suspected Asian giant hornet nest in Nanaimo. On this episode of Global News’ What happened to…...

There are stories…..that grabbed the whole world’s attention… But what happens when the news cycle continues to turn and new stories take over the headlines? This season, not only do we revisit major new events, we dig deep into topics YOU have asked for. We have 20 brand new episodes for you this season.  Global News What Happened To...? arrives November 25th. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...

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On this episode of the Global News podcast What happened to…?,  Erica Vella updates stories that were covered in Season 1 of the podcast, including the Quebec mosque shooting, Boko Haram and the Fukushima nuclear crisis. Contact: Twitter: @ericavella Email: erica.vella@globalnews.ca Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2002, Trent Evans was overcome with excitement when he learned he would be invited to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah to volunteer as an icemaker. Originally from Edmonton, Alta., Evans had been working as a supervisor for the maintenance team that cared for the ice during Oilers games, team practices and other activities. Evans was one of 16 people invited to make and maintain...

In the 1980s, the threat of acid rain in Canada and the U.S. had become a brewing environmental crisis. In areas of Southern Ontario, lakes that once were teeming with wildlife were on the verge of becoming dead lakes, void of fish and other aquatic species. Acid rain occurs when sulphur dioxide and other pollutants mix with moisture in the air to form rain droplets with a high level of acidity. T...

Hannatu Stephens was in her school's hostel in Chibok on the night of April 14, 2014. Speaking through a translator, she said at around 1 a.m., she heard loud noises coming from outside. The men who had broken into the hostel were not military soldiers, but members of the insurgency group, Boko Haram. Stephens and 275 other young women were ordered to leave the hostel and the insurgents set the sc...

In April 2014, Grace Danladi Saleh had moved to her husband’s hometown of Chibok, Nigeria. He husband, Idrisa Danladi Saleh, was the town’s doctor and cared for the community. On April 14, 2014, Grace said she heard loud noises and their home began to shake. Her husband went to investigate. That night 276 schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram and in the days and weeks following the abductions, i...

Aymen Derbali knew he would be late for evening prayers, but he decided to go anyway. He left his home in Sainte Foy, Que., on Jan. 29, 2017. When he arrived at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, he took a spot in the back corner to not disturb others but within minutes, he said he heard a loud noise. That night, six people were killed and 19 seriously injured when a gunman burst into the...

The Flint Michigan water crisis garnered international attention in 2015 after it was discovered that residents were being poisoned by the water running through their taps. A year earlier in 2014, the city switched its water source from the Detroit water system to the Flint River as a cost-saving solution while awaiting the building of a pipeline from Lake Huron which hadn’t been completed yet. Ma...

Brazil was among one of the countries most affected by the Zika virus in 2015 and 2016 but Dr. Carlos Pardo, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said the virus emerged in the 1950s. Zika virus is an arbovirus — a type of virus that is transmitted by certain kinds of insects like mosquitos. The ades Aegypti mosquito, which is primarily found in tropical climates, is a known carrier of the viru...

Eleven years ago, Haiti was rocked by a seven-magnitude earthquake that killed, injured and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Franciscot Auguste was living in the country at the time with his mother and four other siblings. He said Jan. 12, 2010, started out like a normal day that is until he realized the shaking he was feeling was an earthquake; he acted immediately and ran outside of th...

On this episode of the Global News What Happened To...?, journalist Erica Vella revisits the story of Alan Kurdi and the Syrian refugee crisis (Part 2) In 2012, Ruba Bilal was living in Damascus, Syria with her husband and two sons; she had reached a level of stability in her life, but the country where she had lived her whole life was in the middle of a dangerous civil war. Bilal said she was an...

In early September in 2015, a photo of a young boy lying lifeless on a beach in the Mediterranean captured the world’s attention. The picture showed two-year-old Alan Kurdi lying face down in the sand. Kurdi and his family were attempting to cross the Mediterranean by boat after fleeing war-torn Syria, but on the journey Alan, his brother Ghalib and mother Rehana perished; Abdullah Kurdi, the fami...

On this episode of the Global News What Happened To...? journalist Erica Vella revisits the 2013 Lac Megantic train derailment. In the early hours of July 6, 2013, a train carrying petroleum crude oil crashed into the centre of Lac Megantic, a small town in Quebec. The downtown core erupted in flames; 47 people perished, 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes. The tragedy marks one of the wo...

Following years of drought, Australia was ravaged by sweeping bushfires that began in 2019; 33 people were killed and thousands of others were displaced. Bushfires are an annual threat during Australia’s dry summers, but this wave of fires came early, catching many by surprise. The speed of the fires, coupled with the consistently dry conditions, created a situation firefighters struggled to contr...