2019
year
2019 (MMXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2019th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 19th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 10th and last year of the 2010s decade.
This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year.
Up to that point, 2019 had been described as the "best year in human history" by some newspapers and media outlets in the United States, including The New York Times and WNYC.
Events
January
January 1
Romania takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, after the Austrian presidency.
New Horizons makes a close approach to the Kuiper belt object (KBO) 486958 Arrokoth at 05:33 UTC.
Jair Bolsonaro begins his four-year term as President of Brazil.
Qatar withdraws from OPEC.
Works published by authors who died in 1948 enter the public domain in many countries. In the U.S., all works published in 1923 enter the public domain, the first entry of published works into the public domain since 1998.
January 2 – Adventist Health System rebranded its facilities to the trade name AdventHealth.
January 3 – Chinese probe Chang'e 4 becomes the first artificial object to land on the far side of the Moon.
January 5 – Bartholomew I of Constantinople issues a formal decree granting independence to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from the Russian Orthodox Church.
January 6 – Muhammad V of Kelantan abdicates the federal throne as the 15th monarch of Malaysia, the first Malaysian monarch to do so.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2019” is year. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through year, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “year” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25274. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019, 1948, 1923 and 1998.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “2019”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 2019 primary sources, 2019 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “2019”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “2019” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.