One quite valid way to look back at the year gone by is to see what people wanted to know more about. Search engines are not only the easiest way to get more information, but those searches are also documented. Every year, Google releases their statistics on what people searched for the most, which gives us an overview of the world's curiosity. The most asked question was "how," as in how-to, meaning that people were planning to do something, whatever it was.
The top search terms of the year in the United States were:
1 Hurricane Irma
2 Matt Lauer
3 Tom Petty
4 Super Bowl
5 Las Vegas shooting
6 Mayweather vs McGregor fight
7 Solar eclipse
8 Hurricane Harvey
9 Aaron Hernandez
10 Fidget Spinner
The global results are quite different, and you can also find lists of top search terms broken down by category as well as location at Google Trends.