The Book of the Year Read online

  CONTENTS

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  INTRODUCTION

  A

  B

  C

  D

  E

  F

  G

  H

  I

  J

  K

  L

  M

  N

  O

  P

  Q

  R

  S

  T

  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  In a year when much of the news was believable but fake, comes a book packed with stories that are unbelievable but true.

  The Book of the Year is a hilarious guide to 2017’s most extraordinary events, unearthed by the creators of the award-winning hit comedy podcast No Such Thing As A Fish. Each week, over a million people tune in to find out what bizarre and astonishing facts Dan, James, Anna and Andy have found out over the previous seven days. Now the gang have turned their attention to the news of the past twelve months.

  You’ll discover the curious details behind the main headlines – how Donald Trump slept on the 66th floor of a 58-storey building, what effect Brexit had on Coco Pops, and why China’s president can’t stand Winnie the Pooh – as well as hundreds of stories you may have missed entirely, like the news that:

  ▶ Qatar built a refugee camp for camels.

  ▶ The world’s first avocado restaurant ran out of avocados on its first day.

  ▶ The victim of Britain’s first ever shark attack ended up with a cut thumb.

  From strange inventions to baffling elections, via a surprising amount of sausage news, The Book of the Year is an eye-opening exploration of the incredible year you didn’t know you’d lived through.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  NO SUCH THING AS A FISH is a team of researchers who work on the BBC TV show QI. Each week they gather together in their Covent Garden office and record a podcast discussing the most interesting facts they’ve discovered over the previous seven days. In the three years since it launched, the show has attracted 1.4 million weekly listeners, won multiple awards, been transformed into the spin-off topical BBC2 TV series No Such Thing As The News, performed a sell-out UK tour, and been named one of iTunes’ top 10 most downloaded podcasts of 2016.

  The team is made up of James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and Dan Schreiber.

  James is the head writer on QI, with ten series and five bestselling books under his belt. He has also appeared on TV quiz shows Fifteen to One and Only Connect, reaching the semi-finals in the latter and embarrassingly crashing out of the former.

  Andrew is a writer and comedian who also contributes to Private Eye magazine, is a member of the improv troupe Austentatious, and has staged his own one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe. He is known to fans (his mum) as ‘Lightning’.

  Anna is a QI scriptwriter who has previously worked in Scottish politics and Australian advertising, as well as selling fruit wine and hay-baling in the Highlands. She refuses to join Twitter. #GetAnnaOnTwitter

  Dan loves yetis.

  For Bean, Fenella, Molly and Polina

  And for Littlefoot

  who, just like this book, was conceived, assembled and delivered in 2017.

  INTRODUCTION

  On 20 January 2017 Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States (see Inauguration), making him the second former Apprentice host to have been sworn into office this year (see You’re Fired!). From that moment on, his name would dominate the year’s headlines, along with Brexit, North Korea and Russian hacking. With these events towering over the news, it would be easy to forget the lesser-known, equally fascinating episodes that made 2017.

  For it was also the year that the reincarnation of King Arthur went to court to challenge a parking fine he got at Stonehenge (see Kings), that German scientists revealed the best way to avoid slipping over on ice is to walk like a penguin (see Penguins) and that the Russian website that regulates the banning of websites accidentally banned itself (see Internet).

  This book collects the extraordinary, bizarre and amusing moments that didn’t quite make it to the front pages. Over the course of the past year we have read every publication we could get our hands on, from the Washington Post to the Liverpool Echo, and from the Aurorasaurus blog to the Olive Oil Times. We made a note of everything we found fascinating along the way – the mysteries (see Toilet Paper, Used), the regrets (see Public, Don’t Ask The) and the triumphs (see Failures) – and split them up into essays, lists and occasional extracts of conversation between the four of us (see Article 50).

  Our thanks are due to the thousands of reporters, investigators, bloggers and curious minds all over the world who dug out all the facts in this book first-hand. Long may they continue to do so, with or without bags on their head (see Journalists). We’re also grateful to the adventurers, scientists, crocodile-punchers (see Dickheads) and recluses (see Hermits) who made the news happen in the first place. Because of their fine work there was never a shortage of material, or indeed a shortage of shortage material (see Food and Drink).

  So here it is – in a year when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war (see Korea, North), when governments wobbled (see UK General Election), protesters protested (see Protests, Non-Dirty), and the only things that stayed strong and stable were the sales of fidget spinners (see Fidget Spinners), we present The Book of the Year: 365 different ways to look back on the utter madness that was 2017, the weirdest year since last year.

  Dan, James, Anna and Andy

  Covent Garden

  AARDVARKS▶

  A zookeeper performed mouth-to-snout on an aardvark for an hour.

  Only five aardvarks were born in Europe in 2016, so when one was born in the Polish city of Wrocław this year and struggled to survive, the head of the Small Mammals Division at the zoo there, Andrzej Miozga, did all he could do keep him alive. We spoke to Wrocław Zoo, and asked how you perform CPR on an aardvark. This is what they said:

  ‘Mr Miozga acted on instinct, he cut the cord, placed the baby on his fleece jacket and started rubbing it vigorously but gently with a towel. He then placed the baby’s snout in his mouth and blew the air in. At the same time he was doing chest compressions using his fingers and continued rubbing with a towel. After a few rounds the little heart started beating, but the cub still wasn’t breathing. So Mr Miozga went on with the mouth-to-snout ventilation. Finally the baby started breathing on his own. All together it took about one hour after he came out.’

  Meanwhile, in South Africa, scientists finally caught aardvarks having a drink, 250 years after the species was first described. It had long been assumed that they get all the water they need from the juicy bodies of termites, but a zoologist at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, Graham Kerley, and his team announced that evidence exists for aardvarks drinking from puddles.*

  If you’re a human who wants to drink like an aardvark, a bar in Exeter is selling an ‘aardvark cocktail’, served with real ants. The drink is made with rum, lemongrass and lime, and is served with an ant chaser. The bar owner, Patrick Fogarty, describes it as ‘crunchy yet satisfying’.

  ABDICATIONS▶

  The Japanese Emperor wanted to abdicate, but wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.

  Japan’s Emperor Akihito is banned from making political statements – including any that suggest he wants to abdicate. As a result, he had to make a speech very delicately hinting at his concerns about being able to fulfil his dutie
s. The government eventually worked out what he meant and voted to allow him to step down.

  But Akihito still has the problem of a distinct lack of heirs. Once the new emperor takes over, there will only be three heirs in total (emperors have to be men, although there is now some debate about this). Some experts are worried that if the youngest heir, Prince Hisahito, has no sons, the 2,600-year imperial line will be broken. Hisahito is only 11, so it’s a little early to tell how this will play out.

  As a young man, Emperor Akihito had a list of 800 candidates for marriage prepared for him, but rejected them all in favour of someone he met playing tennis. His main interest is marine biology and he’s an expert on the goby fish. Interestingly, when the goby equivalent of an emperor (the dominant male) dies, he is replaced by the next in line; but if there are no males, then a female changes its sex and takes the ‘emperor’s’ place.

  The Japanese royal family has a claim to be the smallest royal family in the world (even Liechtenstein’s is bigger, though its population is 3,400 times smaller). Strictly speaking, the Vatican is technically a monarchy – arguably making the Pope a one-man, elected royal family. The largest royal family is that of Saudi Arabia, with 4,000 princes and 30,000 other assorted relatives.

  ABKHAZIA▶

  A country that most of the world doesn’t think exists, had an election that assumed most of its population didn’t exist.

  Abkhazia, a self-declared republic that’s trying to break from Georgia, is currently recognised only by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and, bizarrely, the tiny Pacific island of Nauru. Still, despite the lack of more general recognition, parliamentary elections were held there this year. Technically, elections in Abkhazia are deemed invalid if less than 25 per cent of people vote. But although only 21 per cent of the population voted on this occasion, the election was still declared valid as it was decided that any citizens who hold Georgian passports should not be regarded as Abkhazian nationals.

  The country was also the subject of a critically acclaimed Romanian documentary this year, called Ouale lui Tarzan, or ‘Tarzan’s Testicles’. It told the story of the world’s oldest primate centre, the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy, in the Abkhazian capital, Sukhumi. The institute provided the monkeys that the Soviet Union sent into space in the 1980s and was founded by a man called Ilya Ivanov whose lifetime obsession was creating an ape-human hybrid.

  ADVERTISING▶

  The advertising for the newly opened Trump International Hotel & Tower in Vancouver claims it is six floors taller than it actually is.

  Trump Hotels claim that the building is 69 storeys high when actually it is only 63. They arrived at their total by including below-ground storeys (which are mostly used for parking) in their calculations. In the course of his career, Trump has claimed that a 67-storey tower has 78 floors, that a 43-storey building has 46 floors, that a 44-storey building has 52 floors, that a 31-storey building has 41 floors, that a 70-storey building has 90 floors, and that he lives on the 66th floor of a 58-storey building.

  Meanwhile, the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto paid a reported $6 million not to advertise itself as a Trump hotel. The hotel decided to part ways with the Trump name following many years of construction delays, lawsuits and, more recently, because it had become a gathering point for protests against the president. The agreement they reached allows the management to remove all of Trump’s branding from the 65-storey building (which, incidentally, has only 57 floors).

  For more on Trump’s towers, see Trump Tower.

  The head of the Lithuanian tourist board resigned after a social media campaign was found to be using pictures of other countries in its advertising. The campaign was called ‘Real is Beautiful’.

  AI▶

  The world champion of the ancient Chinese game of Go was beaten by a three-year-old Brit, who then immediately retired.

  One way and another, it’s been a bad year for humankind. We’ve been defeated by Artificial Intelligence at no-limit Texas hold ’em poker, Ms Pac-Man and the fighting game Super Smash Bros. And an AI has been developed that can write AI software better than humans. But perhaps the most crushing defeat came when AlphaGo, an AI program developed by Google’s DeepMind Technologies, beat the world champion, China’s Ke Jie, 3–0. AlphaGo was born in 2014, and was classed as British in the Go rankings as the team behind it is based in London. After beating the world champion it immediately retired. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said that winning these games had been ‘the highest possible pinnacle for AlphaGo as a competitive program’.

  Owing to its incredible complexity, Go had been one of the final games at which humans could still beat the machines. Ke Jie later said, ‘Last year, it was still quite human-like … but this year, it became like a god of Go.’ Ke Jie’s Chinese fans didn’t see the interview, though: China (presumably for reasons of national pride) wouldn’t allow the match to be shown on television or streamed online.

  In the game of Go, in which players take turns putting pebbles on to a board to win territory, there are 10^10^171 possible combinations of move. If every grain of sand on Earth each contained the number of stars in the Milky Way, and each of those stars had a hundred planets, each with 10 billion humans, then the number of cells in all those humans would be fewer than the number of zeros in the number we’re talking about.

  AIRDROPS▶

  Australia is dropping sausages over its outback. They come in two flavours: toad and kangaroo.

  For years Australia has had a problem with cane toads (which are not indigenous to the continent). Many of its native animals eat them, and because the toads are toxic they tend to kill their predators. To combat this, scientists are dropping cane-toad-flavoured sausages, laced with a chemical to make predators feel sick, over the outback in the hope that it will deter them from biting real toads in the future. Rather more brutally, the Aussie government is also dropping poisoned sausages to deal with their feral cats, who are apparently partial to a kangaroo wiener.

  This year Canada also combated an environmental issue with airdrops – of pregnant bison. Banff National Park has not had any bison for more than 100 years, and the ecosystem suffers from their absence. Conservationists collected pregnant bison from the nearby Elk Island and took them to the pastures of the Rocky Mountains. They spent the last 25 kilometres of their journey packed into shipping containers, dangling underneath a helicopter by a rope. Their horns were covered in plastic hoses to stop them injuring each other in transit.

  For another flying sausage, see Drones. For a walking sausage, see Stick Insects.

  ALIENS▶

  Eleven ‘promising’ alien signals were reported this year. Unfortunately, they all turned out to be from mobile phones on Earth.

  The Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia listens for radio signals that might indicate signs of intelligence from 692 of the nearest stars to Earth. It turns out, however, that the signals that aliens might send are very similar to those given out by mobile phones.

  This wasn’t the only ‘alien’ mystery that may have been solved this year. The Wow! signal was named in 1977, when an anomaly was found in a list of data, and astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was so impressed that he circled the numbers on the computer printout and wrote the comment ‘Wow!’. Antonio Paris, an astronomy professor at St Petersburg College in Florida, has now suggested that the signal didn’t come from an alien life form but from a couple of comets that were passing by at the time. Not everyone is convinced. Alan Fitzsimmons, a scientist at Queen’s University Belfast, has described the theory as ‘rubbish’.

  The hunt for ET moved up a gear after the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) – the world’s largest – joined the search. FAST is so vast that you could fill its dish with enough cornflakes to supply every person on Earth with one bowl’s worth every day for a year – and still have some left over. Sited in Guizhou Province, south-west China, it hasn’t proved universally popular: its construction involved
the forcible displacement of 9,000 villagers.

  Tom DeLonge, the former frontman of the band Blink-182, was named ‘UFO Researcher of the Year’ at the 2017 International UFO Congress. It came after emails leaked by WikiLeaks showed he had discussed aliens with Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. ‘There’s a lot that I can’t say, but there’s some that I can,’ he said in his video acceptance speech. ‘My job has only just begun on this subject matter and there’s some big shit planned.’

  AMAZON▶

  The founder of Amazon.com became the world’s richest person for just four hours.

  A surge in Amazon stock on 27 July increased Jeff Bezos’s net worth by $1.1 billion, to $90.9 billion, which meant that he overtook Microsoft’s Bill Gates (who is worth a measly $90.7 billion). However by the middle of the next day, Bezos’s stock had fallen back, and a few days later he was down to third place behind Amancio Ortega, the owner of fashion company Zara.

  Amazon’s stock performance was largely thanks to increased sales. In the early days of the company, a bell would ring every time there was a sale, and staff would gather around to see if they knew the person who had made the purchase. They don’t do that any more. If they did, then on their biggest sales day in 2017 (Amazon Prime Day, 11 July), a bell would need to be rung more than 80,000,000 times.* Each second is very important to Amazon. They have calculated that if their pages loaded just one second slower, it would cost them $1.6 billion in annual sales.

  Amazon expanded beyond the online sector this year, opening a physical bookshop in New York. The company recognises that people have a habit of browsing in shops before buying their books online, and so registered a patent that stops customers in Amazon shops (including Whole Foods, which they acquired this year) from checking out competitors as they look around.