The Book of the Year Read online

  MICRONATIONS▶

  Thousands of Brits tried to escape Brexit by becoming citizens of an offshore military platform.

  Sealand is a rusty naval platform off the Suffolk coast that its occupiers claim is an independent micronation.* Its leader, Prince Michael, who makes a living selling Sealandic aristocratic titles, mugs, stamps and coins, said he’d been inundated with hundreds of applications per day to settle there, after Britain voted to leave the EU. However, he explained that they’re not issuing any passports or visas at the moment due to ‘the current international situation’. And possibly because Sealand’s surface area is about the size of two tennis courts and accommodates a maximum of 150 people.

  Regardless of size, micronations aren’t officially recognised as sovereign states, so are subject to the laws of the nation that claims their territory. Australia’s oldest micronation felt the effects of this recently. The Principality of Hutt River has for some time justified tax evasion by arguing that the tax system is a form of torture (referred to by the region’s self-proclaimed leader as ‘Old Hags Nagging’). But a judge took an unsympathetic view, dismissing its claim of sovereignty as ‘gobbledygook’ and handing it a £1.8 million tax bill. Hutt River had already suffered one upset this year when its ruler abdicated and handed the leadership to his son, Prince Graeme.

  Another royal family with a dubious claim to power made the news when a Russian politician began trying to restore the Romanov dynasty by creating a micronation. Former MP Anton Bakov offered £280 million to the government of Kiribati, a Pacific island nation, in exchange for sovereign rights to its uninhabited Malden, Starbuck and Millennium Islands. He planned to use them as a base from which to bring back the tsars, starting with the German Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen, who has been declared heir to the Russian throne and adopted the name Nicholas III. Kiribati rejected the offer.

  It wasn’t all bad news for aspiring nations, at least according to the founder of Liberland, a 7km-square micronation between Croatia and Serbia. Vit Jedlička expressed the hope that because Mr Trump had phoned Taiwan when he took office, implying (as Jedlička saw it) that the president recognised it as a nation independent of China, he might do the same for Liberland as well. As yet, there has been no word from Mr Trump.

  In June, the leaders of 26 micronations met in Atlanta for their conference, MicroCon 2017. They included representatives from the Kingdom of Jupiter, the Republic of West Who and the Kaotic Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia.

  MIX-UPS▶

  The White House mistook China for its sworn enemy.

  The US government managed three political faux pas about Asia in a single day at the G20 summit in July. Firstly, Donald Trump’s Instagram account mislabelled the prime minister of Singapore as the Indonesian president. The same day, a press release misidentified Shinzoē Abe – the prime minister of Japan – as the country’s president (Japan doesn’t have a president). And to cap it off, the White House then published another press release stating that China’s president, Xi Jinping, was president of ‘the Republic of China’. China is actually called the People’s Republic of China. ‘The Republic of China’ is the official name for Taiwan, a state with whom China is technically at war.

  Donald Trump was himself the victim of an unfortunate mix-up in February. A Dominican newspaper, El Nacional, had to apologise to its readers after it mistakenly ran a photo of Alec Baldwin doing his impersonation of Mr Trump from Saturday Night Live, claiming the absurd caricature was the actual president.

  When Trump took office, the White House set up an official Twitter ‘group’ of administration officials’ accounts. Added to the group, along with Jared Kushner, Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, was a Scottish man called Steve Bannon, who unfortunately has the Twitter handle @SteveBannon, and whose profile picture featured him with a big teddy bear. He now spends a lot of time telling people they’ve got the wrong Steve Bannon, and his profile reads, ‘Nothing to do with US politics or running the White House etc.’*

  MOAB▶

  The US military dropped the MOAB but didn’t drop the MOP.

  The American military’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb is the MOAB, which stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, but is more commonly known by its nickname, the Mother of All Bombs. It had never been used outside testing facilities until Trump gave the order to drop it on a network of ISIS tunnels in Afghanistan in April. The bomb operates partly by sucking all the oxygen from the surrounding air as it explodes, which suffocates anyone nearby or underground, rather than directly blowing them up. It killed 94 ISIS militants, but avoided causing any civilian casualties.

  MOAB isn’t the heaviest bomb in America’s arsenal; that’s the MOP – Massive Ordnance Penetrator – which has never been used but has the capacity to smash through 200 feet of earth or 60 feet of concrete before exploding.

  Russia has a bomb four times more powerful than the MOAB, which, predictably, is nicknamed FOAB – the Father of All Bombs.

  The MOAB is so big and heavy that it can’t be dropped like a normal bomb – it has to be dragged out of the plane on a wooden pallet, which is then pulled out by a parachute.

  MOUSTACHES▶

  Twenty-eight years after his death, Salvador Dalí’s moustache remains perfectly intact in the ‘10 past 10’ position.

  This discovery was made in July when the artist’s body was exhumed to settle a paternity case. Narcís Bardalet, who had embalmed him 28 years previously, and who was invited back to open his crypt, said that his body looked exactly as it did when he was buried. The artist’s moustache was still arranged as Dalí had requested, in the ten and two positions on a clock face. ‘It’s a miracle,’ Bardalet said.

  Dalí was dug up because fortune-teller Maria Martinez, whose mother worked as his cleaner, claimed she was the artist’s daughter. To uncover the truth, DNA was extracted from his nails, teeth, and shinbones and sent off to be tested.* A crane was used to lift up the 1.5-tonne tombstone in the museum where he’s buried and the operation was done at night with no media, phones or cameras allowed, with a tarpaulin draped over the museum so drones couldn’t see in. Despite being a fortune-teller, Martinez failed to predict the outcome: Dalí was not her father.

  MOVIES▶

  The film Man Down made £7 in the first week of its UK release, despite the average price of a cinema ticket being £7.21.

  The film starred Shia LeBeouf as an army veteran suffering from PTSD. It was released in one cinema only, the Reel in Burnley, Lancashire, and tempted only one person into buying a ticket in its first week. By the following week four more tickets had been sold. Man Down was variously reviewed as an ‘insult to the intelligence’, a ‘post-apocalyptic shambles’ and ‘misjudged on almost every level’.

  It wasn’t the only 2017 film to experience a tricky launch. Beauty and the Beast was banned from Kuwait and pulled from a drive-in in Alabama due to the fact that one of its characters is gay; Wonder Woman was banned in Lebanon and Tunisia because the film’s lead actor, Gal Gadot, is Israeli (see Wonder Woman); and a feminist Indian film called Lipstick Under My Burkha was denied a certificate by censors because the story was deemed to be ‘lady oriented’. In Uzbekistan, courts banned a film from being shown because it didn’t star Morgan Freeman. The film, called Daydi, used Freeman’s images in promotion, but he was nowhere to be seen in the movie.

  Professional clowns complained that they were losing business due to the reboot of Stephen King’s It. ‘It’s a science-fiction character. It’s not a clown and has nothing to do with pro clowning,’ said Pam Moody of the World Clown Association.

  MUSEUMS▶

  For a man pretending to be a chicken, see Art; for dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, see Body Slams; for the priceless collection that got incinerated by immigration, see Cock-Ups; for a coal museum that runs on renewables, see Energy; for a success story, see Failures; for kimchi, see Kimchi; for an Ice Age cold case, see Ötzi; for half a wax Hillary, see Waxworks.

  MUSIC▶ />
  A musician broke a world record by hitting one piano key 824 times in a minute.

  Domingos-Antonio Gomes practised for four months and beat the previous world record of 765 hits in 60 seconds. The trick to it, he explained, is to alternate between two fingers.

  Nigerian musician Femi Kuti attempted to break a different musical world record. He sustained a single note on his saxophone for 46 minutes and 38 seconds, beating the record set by Kenny G in 1997 for the longest note played on a wind instrument. Unfortunately, after spending the weekend celebrating, he discovered that another musician had held a note for 47 minutes and 6 seconds in 2000. Undaunted, Femi made a second attempt a few days later and successfully broke the record by holding the note for 51 minutes and 35 seconds, only to be told that Guinness no longer recognises the breathing technique he used.

  Meanwhile, in Sweden, a local councillor is campaigning for music to be played in school bathrooms to hide the sound of students defecating. Cecilia Cato, who represents the Swedish Centre Party in the Tingsryd municipality, argues that many pupils are too embarrassed to poo in public toilets for fear of being overheard, and that playing music in the bathrooms would solve this problem. She’s not the only politician who favours musical accompaniment: in July, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a well-known tune played over the end of his speech on a new goods and services tax. The piece of music he chose to broadcast to the crowd gathered at the Institute of Chartered Accountants was ‘The Imperial March’ from Star Wars, aka Darth Vader’s theme tune.

  Someone else who made a surprising musical choice was Tony Iommi, lead guitarist and songwriter for Black Sabbath. Having helped invent the genre of heavy metal, he took a slightly different direction this year and wrote a choral piece inspired by Psalm 133. And in other metal news, the band Korn replaced their 47-year-old bassist with a 12-year-old one (the son of Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo) for a series of live dates in South America.

  Donald Trump lost a legal battle against a 40-year-old amateur musician who made an iPhone app designed to teach people to play the trumpet. It was called iTrump. After a six-year battle, Tom Scharfeld won his case, despite not even having a lawyer. His other app is a trombone app called iBone.

  In February, Bulgaria’s public radio broadcaster was permitted to play modern music for the first time in two months. Since December, a copyright dispute had limited it to playing music that was at least 70 years old. During that time it broadcast almost exclusively classical and traditional folk music, and its audience figures increased by 20 per cent.

  NAMES▶

  According to the Internet, the Name of the Year is Boats Botes.

  Mr Botes, a South African mining executive, defeated Eliza Fox Teats, Bird Lovegod, Aphrodite Bodycomb, Quindarious Monday and Andy Brandy Casagrande IV on his way to the final of the online poll, where he beat Chicago resident YourMajesty Lumpkins.

  It was a good year for people with appropriate names. Lauren Child became the new Children’s Laureate; Hubert Legal was given responsibility for heading the EU’s legal taskforce in Brexit negotiations; the asset management firm Walker Crips hired a man called Crispin Cripwell; and in Oregon, a convicted felon called Fellony was charged with three more felonies. Somewhat less fittingly, an amateur football manager called Aaron Pride was fined for shouting homophobic abuse at a referee.

  Meanwhile, an Indian restaurant owner in San Francisco found that he sold more curries when Golden State Warriors basketball team played, as they have a player called Steph Curry. And in the science arena, a paper explaining why horses evolved to have only one toe on each hoof was coauthored by Brianna McHorse. The year 2017 featured many other brilliantly named people (and animals) who were absent from the Name of the Year poll, but do appear in this book:

  For Professor Cock van Oosterhout, see Fish; for Seedy Baldeh, see Gambia; for Archbishop Pennisi, see Godfather; for Fany Brotcorne, see Godfather: Part III; for Alfie Plant and Daisy Meadows, see Golf; for Cluck Norris, see Kangaroos; for Officer Hyman, see Kinky; for Lorne Grabher, see Licence Plates; for Chuck Tingle, see Literature; for Brynneth Pawltro, see Mayors; for Terry Peck aka 2pec, see Runner, Doing a; and for Randy Dickensheets, see Waxworks.

  President Macron got a ‘First Dog’ this year. The French Canine Society demands that pedigree dogs have to be named alphabetically by year, and since this year is ‘N’ he named it Nemo, after Captain Nemo.

  One of the people on the FBI’s ‘most wanted’ list this year was a man called Joe McCool. McCool was wanted for allegedly running a $10 million Ponzi scheme.

  NASA▶

  For a flying machine that could fit four Titanics in it, see Balloons; for a photograph of the end of the world, see Extinctions; for flat-packs on Mars, see IKEA; for advances in baking, see International Space Station; for astronauts living on a volcano, see Mars; for space mice, see Mice, Space; for a super spud, see Potatoes; for something that smells of farts, see Uranus.

  NATIONAL ANTHEMS▶

  Chinese people can now be sent to jail for 15 days if they don’t sing the national anthem properly.

  The legislation was passed in response to concerns that the song, ‘March of the Volunteers’, is not sufficiently respected, following reports that people were singing it without due solemnity, or were laughing or being disruptive while the tune was played. It was already the case that the national anthem couldn’t be performed at private celebrations, only at major sporting events and on diplomatic occasions. In September a new law ruled that singers also had to perform it in a prescribed way, with appropriate dignity, and while standing in an upright posture. One politician also proposed banning people from putting their hands on their hearts while singing the anthem, because the gesture is ‘too American’.

  In other national anthem news:

  ▶ Philippines: A bill was proposed ruling that citizens must sing the national anthem when it’s being played in public, and with fervour. Failure to do so could result in a large fine and up to a year in prison.

  ▶ India: Before a film showing, not only do cinemas now have to play the national anthem, but audiences have to stand up while it is being performed (people have been arrested for failing to do this). The government also said that those who are unable to stand due to injury or disability should still ‘maintain the maximum possible alertness physically’.* The law led to confusion when a film included the national anthem in one of its scenes, and viewers didn’t know whether they were supposed to rise to their feet. The Supreme Court subsequently clarified that if it’s played as part of the film, you don’t have to stand up.

  ▶ Slovenia: The Slovenian national anthem was played instead of the Slovakian anthem at the world hockey championships.

  ▶ Australia: A petition demanding that the Australian national anthem be changed to the Outkast song ‘Hey Ya!’ was signed by four people. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull formally responded, declaring that the government had no plans to abandon ‘Advance Australia Fair’ just yet.

  A Malaysian man called Thean See Xien has memorised 112 national anthems, despite speaking only two languages. He’s been learning them for 15 years, and says he intends to master the national anthems of all the countries from every continent, barring Antarctica. He said, ‘It’s too bad about Antarctica, but if penguins taught me a national anthem, I’d do my best to learn it.’

  -NAUTS▶

  For astronauts, see International Space Station; for lavanauts, see Mars; for mousetronauts, see Mice, Space; and for larvaenauts, see Potatoes.

  NEW ZEALAND▶

  Eminem sued New Zealand’s ruling National Party for using one of his songs.

  The National Party insists that its advert didn’t actually use the song ‘Lose Yourself’ in its 2014 campaign advert. It was, the party says, another song loosely based on it. The National Party set up a company called Stan 3 to manage that campaign. Coincidentally, ‘Stan’ is the name of another Eminem song, although the party says it named the company that bec
ause it’s ‘Nats’ (the party’s nickname) spelled backwards.

  When not fighting rap battles, the Nats have been confronting the country’s pests. The government has set itself the target of ridding the country of every single rat, possum and stoat by 2050. The aim is to protect the country’s native bird population, and the government has invested an extra $20 million in the project over the past year, on top of its standard conservation budget.

  As well as invasive species, Kiwis are worried about invasive breakfast cereals. In June, 300 boxes of Weetabix were held at New Zealand customs because officials were concerned that customers would confuse them with the indigenous equivalent, Weet-Bix.

  In order to combat continuing revenue loss, a New Zealand postal service in the city of Tauranga has started delivering KFC.

  NICKNAMES▶

  The electoral chief of Papua New Guinea won a court order to stop people calling him ‘Mr Tomato’.

  Electoral commissioner Patilias Gamato insisted blogger Martyn Namorong had named him wrong, and had posted a picture of him with a tomato for a head (Namorong denied the latter accusation). According to Gamato: ‘He made some defamatory statements and also called my surname “tomato”. I don’t look like a tomato, I’m a human being. He put a big tomato on my head, what if he did that to you?’ One of the country’s former prime ministers asked, ‘Is Mr Gamato so thin skinned?’ Gamato’s legal statement insisted he was ‘not a vegetable’.*

  This wasn’t the only nickname to make the headlines this year. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, revealed she was known as ‘The Growler’ at school because she was so bad at singing;† White House aides leaked to the press that their private nickname for Ivanka Trump is ‘Princess Royal’; and newspapers discovered Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer’s university nickname was ‘Sean Sphincter’. In 1993, Spicer furiously demanded a retraction and apology after his college paper printed the insulting name. The newspaper apologised, insisting it had been a perfectly innocent error due to their auto-correction software, but Spicer insisted it was a ‘malicious and intentional attack’.