2022 in Review: The New PEOPLE Yearbook Is Out Now

At the close of another year, the big headlines are easily remembered: A shocking slap at the Oscars; a figure skating scandal at the Winter Olympics; a billion-dollar sequel to an '80s blockbuster, the marriage of two superstars — more than 20 years after their first engagement — celebrated with not one but two weddings.

But some of the smaller moments are worth recalling too. PEOPLE's new special Yearbook edition includes both the top stories of 2022 and the events that, while eclipsed by the year's biggest news, nonetheless brought joy and often marked notable milestones.

At the 2022 Oscars, after Chris Rock made a joke about the 1997 film G.I. Jane (for which Demi Moore had shaved her head) and Jada Pinkett Smith — the actress suffers from alopecia — her husband, Will Smith, strode onstage and slapped Rock's face, shortly before winning Best Actor for King Richard. Smith then posted a videotaped apology to Rock in July saying, "There is no part of me that thinks that was the right way to behave in that moment."

The episode became the most talked about of the Awards, drowning out a little history made that night by two other acting winners. Ariana DeBose became the first openly queer woman of color to win an acting Oscar when she took Best Supporting Actress for her dynamic Anita in Steven Spielberg's  West Side Story, and Troy Kotsur's warm supporting turn in Best Picture winner CODA made him only the second deaf actor to win an Oscar (his CODA costar Marlee Matlin was the first). "Don't worry, Marlee, I won't drop any F-bombs in my speech today," Kotsur joked in a moving acceptance delivered in American Sign Language.

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The news that dominated the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing was a scandal in the marquee event of women's figure skating. Russian Kamila Valieva, 15, who was favored to take gold, had tested positive at the trials for a banned heart drug, trimetazidine, which may enhance endurance. After a suspension, Valieva won reinstatement on appeal — she claimed she might have been contaminated by her grandfather's medication — and tested negative in Beijing. Still, Olympic organizers said they would not hold a ceremony if Valieva earned a medal. She didn't.

In her free skate the clearly stressed teen fell and finished fourth; her teammate Anna Shcherbakova, 17, captured gold. "It's devastating that she was put in this situation," retired U.S. Olympic skater Polina Edmunds tweeted of Valieva. Under pressure, the figure skating federation responded by raising the minimum age from 15 to 17 for the next Olympics.

It could be a Games remembered for that drama, or it could be the Olympics notable for American figure skater Nathan Chen — famed for his dazzling quadruple jumps — taking the gold and setting a world record in the men's short program with a score of 113.97 and for U.S. speed skater Erin Jackson winning the 500 meters, and becoming became the first Black woman from any country to win a gold in speed skating. "Cried so much," she tweeted, "that I put on my medal backward . . . then cried some more."

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The '80s came soaring back when a Top Gun: Maverick, the first sequel to the 1986 Tom Cruise hit, topped 2022's box office with more than $1.4 billion. Why did it take 36 years for Pete "Maverick" Mitchell to fly again? "For decades people have been asking ," Cruise told PEOPLE. There were many reasons, including the death in 2012 of Top Gun director Tony Scott, who had planned to return. The project was revived with director Joseph Kosinski and scheduled for a summer 2019 release — then scuttled by COVID. When, at last, Top Gun: Maverick hit theaters in May, the world was ready for a big-screen blockbuster. "I wanted it to be a love letter to aviation," said Cruise.

A TV show's love letter to a pop song from the same era led to a less heralded but similarly nostalgic '80s moment: The return to the Billboard charts of the 1985 Kate Bush single "Running Up that Hill." The synth-heavy song, which had been Bush's first Top 40 hit in the States, went back in the Top 10 in 2022 after it was heard in a key scene from season 4 of the Netflix show Stranger Things.

The singer-songwriter, who has rarely licensed her music for television, did so this time because she liked the show. "[Stranger Things] is such a great series, I thought that the track would get some attention," Bush told BBC Radio 4. "But I just never imagined that it would be anything like this. It's so exciting. But it's quite shocking really, isn't it? I mean, the whole world's gone mad."

Dave Hogan/Getty Kate Bush

In 2022 was no bigger celebrity union than that of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck who, 20 years after their first engagement, finally tied the knot by eloping to a Las Vegas chapel in July. The couple exchanged vows again before some 135 loved ones in August, at Affleck's island estate off the coast of Georgia. The bride, who wore three custom Ralph Lauren gowns throughout the evening, later wrote in her newsletter On the JLo: "The twenty years between those dreams of youth and the adult world of love and family we embraced that day, brought more to this marriage than either of us ever could have imagined."

At an equally joy-filled but comparatively lower-key event with just 60 friends (and notably, no close family) Britney Spears wed her boyfriend of five years, model-actor Sam Asghari, at a June ceremony that was a declaration not only of love, but of freedom. Finally released in late 2021 from the 13-year conservatorship that gave her father, Jamie, control of not only her estimated $60 million fortune but also such personal decisions as whether to have a child with Asghari, Spears donned a Versace bridal gown and walked down the aisle to Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" before guests included Drew Barrymore, Madonna, Paris Hilton and Selena Gomez, among others under a pink rose-strewn tent.

Spears shared her happiness with fans, particularly those who had stood outside the L.A. courthouse with "Free Britney" signs, and later wrote on Instagram of the big night: "Fairy tales are real."

Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic/Getty Britney Spears and Sam Asghari

For more of 2022's most memorable moments, plus tributes to stars we lost, pick up PEOPLE's 2022 Yearbook, available now wherever magazines are sold.