The Book of the Year Read online

  Pupils across the UK struggled in Key Stage 2 tests because their punctuation was the wrong shape. Teachers complained after their students lost marks for commas that pointed the wrong way, semicolons that were too large and full stops positioned slightly too high.

  SCOTLAND▶

  For a pirate ship in a tree, see Boats; for non-existent bairns, see Donalds; for the good name of Buckfast, see Easter; for the worst ever shot at goal, see Football; for the other Steve Bannon, see Mix-Ups; for kosher convicts, see Orange Is the New Black; for a deep-frozen single malt see Whisky; and for Nessie’s current whereabouts, see Zoology, Crypto-.

  SELFIES▶

  The average millennial spent 2.2 days of the year taking selfies.

  That’s a full hour a week, and it was the finding of a survey commissioned by eyewear company Frames Direct. The selfie craze led police to warn that if people took photos while voting in the general election, they might inadvertently reveal another person’s vote, and the photographer could face a fine of £5,000 or six months in prison. Not only that, the Irish Medical Journal suggested that hospitals should list ‘selfie-related wrist injury’ on admission forms as a unique patient issue, as it happens so often. In 2016, for instance, the authors of the article found that it happened four times in a single week in Galway alone.

  Police in Canada also warned against selfies this year, specifically asking people not to take photos with an enormous moose that went on the run in Calgary, Alberta; while a zookeeper at Chessington World of Adventures created a 6-metre selfie stick so she could take photos with giraffes. And former England footballer Alan Shearer, meanwhile, broke the world record for the most selfies in three minutes this April. He managed 134.

  In Iran, a Lionel Messi lookalike was detained by police and had his car impounded because so many people wanted to take a selfie with him. He first found out about his doppelgänger during the last World Cup when his dad told him not to come home. ‘I was confused at first, but then my dad asked me, “Why did you score a goal against Iran?” I said, “But that wasn’t me!” He just responded that he was very furious.’

  Some life insurance companies want to use people’s selfies to calculate their premiums, saying that by looking at their faces, they can tell how likely the person is to die in the next few years.

  SEX CHANGES▶

  For a fish that changes its gender, see Abdications; for a nursery rhyme favourite who became a woman, see Farming; and for the fictional cat who had a sex change, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then yet another, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then had another, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and another one, see Wikipedia; and another one, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then yet one more, see Wikipedia; and then once again, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then another, see Wikipedia; and then yet another, see Wikipedia; and then finally one more, see Wikipedia.

  SHARK ATTACK▶

  The UK’s first ever shark attack left the victim with a cut on the thumb and a bruise on the leg.

  Rich Thomson was surfing in South Devon when a metre-long shark, probably a species called a smooth hound, clamped its teeth around his leg. Mr Thomson punched it in the head and it swam off, leaving him with a large bruise on his leg (the skin wasn’t broken, thanks to the protection of his wetsuit) and a badly cut hand.

  Paul Cox, the head of Shark Trust – a charity that aims to educate people about the animal – was quick to defend the shark. ‘I personally wouldn’t describe this as an attack,’ he told reporters, ‘because it creates an impression that’s out of context. It’s an interesting and slightly unusual incident involving one of the 30 or so types of shark that we’re lucky enough to have living in British Seas.’

  The shark was the least of Rich Thomson’s problems, though: ‘I went home and told my wife I was late because I had been bitten by a shark,’ he told the BBC. ‘She said, “I’ve heard that one before.”’

  Groups of killer whales have been ganging up on great white sharks off the South African coast, removing their livers, and then leaving the sharks to die. Biologist Alison Towner said, ‘Two orcas will take a pectoral fin in their mouth and pull open a shark together to extract the liver.’ Apart from their missing livers, the sharks that washed up were almost completely intact.

  SHRINKFLATION▶

  Brits now get 10 per cent fewer toilet-paper wipes for their money.

  The Office for National Statistics released a report in August which showed that more than 2,500 products are not as big as they used to be: toilet rolls, coffee, chocolate and fruit juice are now all being sold in smaller sizes but for the same price. The practice is known as ‘shrinkflation’.

  The KitKat Chunky has been on a bit of a diet in recent years, with its weight dropping from 48 grams to 40 grams; a Pepperami is now a bit less of an animal – falling from 25 grams to 22.5 grams; and a standard roll of Andrex toilet tissue is also smaller, shrinking from 221 sheets to 200 this year.

  A box of Coco Pops has shrunk in weight from 800 grams to 720 grams, but oddly you actually now get more pops in your packet – 16,500 rather than 14,500. That’s because they have less sugar than they used to; and this in turn has been a reason given by many companies for shrinkflation. They’re not necessarily making their packets smaller due to an increase in costs, or to increase profits, they argue: it’s to fight the obesity crisis.

  Many people blamed Brexit for the shrinking products, and it’s true that the Brexit vote has made many ingredients more expensive to import, but actually it’s a practice that’s been going on for years. In 2015, the consumer group Which? lodged its first ever ‘super-complaint’, alleging that grocers were fooling shoppers with ‘dodgy multi-buys, shrinking products and baffling sales offers’. In that same year, the Daily Mail reported that teabags, washing powder and bread were shrinking.

  Burton’s Biscuits, which makes Wagon Wheels, is very clear that its biscuit has never suffered from shrinkflation, despite many claims to the contrary. Burton’s says that ‘most often our first Wagon Wheel experience is in childhood and hence our hands are smaller.’ Donald Trump has never to our knowledge complained about the size of his Wagon Wheels.

  Nestlé launched a new range of Walnut Whip chocolates with no walnut on top. The company said the product will ‘offer consumers more choice’, but nut experts pointed out it could be a cost-saving measure, since walnut prices have risen by 20 per cent.

  SMART-▶

  For a smart fridge, see Languages; for a smart drone, see Lasers; for a smart dildo, see Lawsuits, Non-Trump; for a smartphone, see Phones; for a smart brolly, see Umbrellas; and for a smart arse see Yoga.

  SMUGGLING▶

  Objects smuggled in 2017 included 4 tonnes of eels, 330 exotic tortoises and 6 kilos of horse genitals.

  This year a huge, pan-European police operation to smash two international eel-smuggling networks ended, having seized 4 tonnes of glass eels* and arrested 48 people. Eels are critically endangered, but black marketeers sell them overseas as a culinary delicacy for up to £6,000 a kilo. Extra patrols have now been sent to the River Severn to deter eel smugglers.

  Elsewhere, Malaysian authorities seized 330 highly rare tortoises worth over £200,000, smuggled from Madagascar in boxes labelled ‘stones’, and staff at JFK airport in New York found 140 kilos of yak meat hidden among sweaters and clothes. In Virginia, customs staff seized 19 kilos of horsemeat, including 6 kilos of horse genitals, from two women arriving from Mongolia. The women claimed the genitals were for ‘medicinal purposes’.

  Drug mules around the world have been getting more imaginative. A woman was detained in China after it was found that her suitcase was partly made of cocaine – it contained 10 kilos of cocaine injections moulded into the body of the case.


  In Malaga, the Spanish police’s Operation Esplit found crooks smuggling cocaine in fake bananas made of resin. And a Bristol drug dealer was ordered to pay £500,000 in costs after trying to smuggle 1.2 kilos of cocaine in a Peppa Pig tea set.

  Bottom-based smuggling remains popular. In Alabama, a man was charged with carrying a concealed weapon without a licence, promoting prison contraband and receiving stolen property, after a pistol fell out of his bottom while he was being booked into a jail for drunkenness. The pistol – which was unloaded – fell out after officers noticed the prisoner was walking ‘strangely’. Limestone County Jail’s sheriff, Mike Blakely, said, ‘It happens.’

  A man in Northern Ireland was given a suspended sentence for smuggling drugs into a prison in a Kinder Egg that he’d placed in his bottom; he had tried to squeeze two up there, but found he couldn’t manage it.

  SNAKES▶

  We have had it with these mother-flipping snakes found on mother-flipping planes …

  ‘Snake on a plane cancels Emirates flight to Dubai’—BBC News, 9 January 2017

  ‘Snake hitches free ride on Alaska flight’—CBS News, 21 March 2017

  ‘Stowaway snake flies from Brisbane to New Zealand on private jet’—ABC News, 28 March 2017

  ‘Huge python [in landing gear] at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport causes scare’—Deccan Chronicle, 21 May 2017

  ‘Tourist discovered at Bali Airport with a suitcase full of valuable snakes’—Bali Post, 28 May 2017

  ‘Snake on plane: Python rescued from [Indian] Air Force aircraft’—Times of India, 5 July 2017

  ‘Snakes seized at JFK after flying on plane from Hong Kong, customs official says’—amNewYork, 11 July 2017

  SOMALIA▶

  Somalians elected their new president – a man called Mr Cheese – in an airport.

  Because of the risk posed by terror group Al-Shabaab, voting had to be held in one of the country’s safest buildings – Mogadishu airport. Not only that, on the day itself a traffic ban was imposed throughout the capital. Major roads were sealed off and everyone had to walk to work.

  The procedure was not exactly democratic: the only people who could vote were the country’s 300 MPs, and they, in turn, had been chosen by just 14,000 tribal elders. The process was also extremely corrupt: investigators estimated that at least $20 million changed hands to buy people’s votes.

  The new president, Mohamed A. Mohamed, used to work in Buffalo, New York, where he had an office job at the New York State Department of Transportation. Sadly there appears to be no connection between Buffalo and his nickname, ‘Mr Cheese’ (he got the name Farmajo, derived from the Italian word ‘formaggio’, from his father, but it’s not clear why). He was previously Somalia’s prime minister in 2010, but was pushed out of office after a year, and returned to his old job in New York, where his colleagues baked him a cake to welcome him back.

  Most of Somalia, including the capital city and seat of government, lost the Internet for three weeks this year after a commercial ship accidentally cut an undersea cable. It cost the country’s economy $10 million a day, equivalent to almost two thirds of its GDP.

  SPEECHES▶

  Donald Trump’s speeches have been turned into a book of poetry.

  Bard of the Deal was edited by Hart Seely, whose previous work includes Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld. Amazingly it wasn’t the first anthology of Trumpian poems on the market: as far back as February 2016 a book called Make Poetry Great Again was available on Kindle in Norway.

  Translators around the world have said it is very hard to translate the words of Donald Trump, because he doesn’t speak in actual sentences. Bérengère Viennot told the French version of Slate, ‘The poverty of his vocabulary is striking.’ And interpreters in Japan were confronted with a tricky question: how to translate ‘nut job’ when Trump fired the FBI director James Comey. They settled on henjin, meaning ‘eccentric’, rather than atama ga warui, which means ‘stupid’, thinking that the latter was inappropriate for someone of Comey’s stature.

  According to a 2017 study of the 2016 US election, the six words most specific to Donald Trump were (in order) ‘I’, ‘Very’, ‘Tremendous’, ‘Nobody’, ‘Going’ and ‘Mexico’.

  A paper from Carnegie Mellon University concluded that the grammar in Trump’s speeches is ‘just below 6th grade level’ (children aged eleven and under).

  SPICER, SEAN▶

  Sean Spicer stole a mini fridge from his junior staffers.

  On the day that Spicer resigned as White House press secretary, the fridge theft story was revealed in an article by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender. Bender reported that a month into the job, Spicer sent an aide to his junior employees to request that they hand over the mini fridge in their office. They refused to do so, and Spicer was subsequently spotted dragging it down the White House driveway towards his own office after they’d all gone home.

  Sean Spicer was an extremely visible presence, and often a figure of ridicule, throughout his time working for Trump. Before he quit the administration, Trump didn’t let him meet the Pope, even though he knew that he really, really wanted to. Spicer is a devout Catholic, and meeting His Holiness was on his bucket list of things to achieve while he remained in office, according to a White House official who spoke to CNN.

  It was assumed he’d join Trump for his papal audience in May, but when the moment came, the only people Trump invited to share the room with himself and Pope Francis were his wife, Melania, and his daughter Ivanka. And his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Plus Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, as well as Communications Advisor Hope Hicks, former bodyguard Keith Schiller, and White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino. One insider, when asked to comment on the fact that Spicer had been left off the list, said, ‘Wow. That’s all he ever wanted.’ Even his harshest media critics expressed sympathy for him. New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush, who had a famously bad relationship with Spicer, tweeted that he found the slight ‘incredibly depressing’. Happily, three months later, Spicer did get to to meet the Pope.

  For things Sean Spicer definitely didn’t do, see Bushes, Hiding in; for other people carrying white goods around, see Marathon, London.

  2017 wasn’t the first time Spicer had worked for a president. He served under George W. Bush as the White House Easter Bunny, dressing up as a giant white rabbit as part of the administration’s Easter celebrations, and spending the day entertaining children on the lawn.

  Sean Spicer chews and swallows 35 sticks of cinnamon-flavoured gum every day before noon. He reassured the Washington Post that he’d spoken to his doctor about it and been told it wasn’t a problem.

  ‘Sean Spicer’ is an anagram of ‘I sense crap’.

  SOLAR ECLIPSE

  James: This year there was a big eclipse, as the moon blocked the sun. But did you know that the moon also blocked the sun on Twitter?

  Dan: No way.

  James: It’s true. NASA has two Twitter accounts: @NASAMoon and @NASASun, and the moon one tweeted: ‘HA HA HA I’ve blocked the Sun! Make way for the Moon. #SolarEclipse2017.’

  Anna: That’s excellent work by whoever runs NASA’s social media accounts. So, everyone’s been talking about the effects on people, but a solar eclipse has a big effect on animals, too.

  Andy: They go crazy, don’t they?

  Anna: They sure do. And this eclipse was no different. At Nashville Zoo the giraffes ran around their enclosures, the rhinos ran to their pens because they thought it was bedtime, and all the flamingos huddled together. But the zookeeper said that she wasn’t sure if the eclipse was to blame, or if it was the 7,000 shrieking people who were watching the animals to see what would happen.

  Dan: That’s a good point. Apparently bats are affected as well – they fly out of their cave for the three minutes of the eclipse.

  James: What happens when the sun comes out again?

  Andy: I think
they just go back, and think, ‘That was a short night.’

  Dan: The eclipse did confuse some humans, too. The Perot Museum in Texas was hosting a viewing party between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. on August 21st, the day of the eclipse. But one mother replied, ‘Most kids go back to school that day, can it be done on the weekend?’

  Anna: Do you know what was the number one single on iTunes during the eclipse? ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, by Bonnie Tyler.

  James: She should have sung ‘Total Eclipse of a Seventy-Mile Strip of the Contiguous United States’.

  Anna: I guess she couldn’t make that scan. But Bonnie Tyler herself was actually on a cruise ship, singing the song. And as the song is normally four minutes, 28 seconds long, and because totality lasted for three minutes, they had to miss out one of the verses.

  Andy: Well, one way they could have increased the length of the eclipse is by travelling east alongside the shadow. NASA sent some jets up into the sky to do that; and they saw the eclipse for more than seven minutes, so they could have listened to the original song and the shortened version as well.

  James: Yes. I read about the NASA trip. One reason they went up there is because it’s darker, and so they can see the sun’s corona better. They wanted to make some measurements to work out why the outside of the sun is hotter than the inside.

  Dan: That’s amazing, but I wouldn’t want to be on that plane. Surely you’d worry that it would tip over with everyone running to one side to watch the eclipse.

  Andy: Knowing my luck, if I’d been on that plane I bet I’d have been stuck on an aisle seat and the guy next to me would have closed the blind and gone to sleep.