The Book of the Year Read online

  ▶ Country: Israel

  Censored: Overly sexual Smurfs. In the Israeli version of the poster for the latest Smurfs movie a Smurfette was removed in order to avoid offending ultra-Orthodox Jews. As the PR company promoting the film explained, they had decided to remove the female Smurf because they didn’t want to ‘incite the feelings of residents’ in the extremely conservative city of Bnei Brak.

  ▶ Country: Tanzania

  Censored: Attacks on censorship. Tanzanian rapper Emmanuel Elibariki was arrested for releasing a song that claimed freedom of expression was under attack. He was released after a day and told he had to ‘improve’ the lyrics.

  ▶ Country: Italy

  Censored: The god Neptune. Facebook censored a photo of a 16th-century nude statue of Neptune standing in the city of Bologna on the grounds that it was ‘explicitly sexual and … shows to an excessive degree the body, concentrating unnecessarily on body parts’. They later apologised.

  For more totally reasonable reactions to freedom of expression, see Belarus and Turkey.

  CHEATING▶

  Romanian lexicographers sabotaged their own dictionary to foil cheating students.

  Last year, dictionary editors in Romania noticed huge spikes in searches for certain words during a nationwide exam, and spotted that those words happened to feature in the exam. Realising that students were surreptitiously looking them up on their smartphones, they decided to keep an eye out for similar patterns this year. Again, they noticed spikes, this time in searches for three particular words. They assumed the same thing was happening, so they immediately altered the definitions of those three words to be incorrect. Their assumption was justified – two of the words had been set as test questions, and cheating students were duly fooled into thinking that the word for ‘spot’ meant ‘rush’ and the word for ‘everywhere’ meant ‘eternal’. The third word had no connection with the exams and was actually just used in a popular blog that day, hence the spike there. Fittingly, it was the word for ‘treachery’.

  CHELSEA▶

  A Ghanaian priest held a special service to thank God for Chelsea’s Premier League victory.

  When Chelsea Football Club won the Premier League, it was celebrated not just in west London, but also in West Africa, where a church hosted a special service in honour of the team’s victory. Pastor Victor Kpakpo Addo (a former DJ and brand ambassador for a mosquito spray) also gave thanks for Arsenal’s FA Cup Final victory, adding, rather uncharitably, ‘because it means that Arsène Wenger will stay and they cannot win the league with him’.*

  Less than a week after Chelsea FC’s victory came a victory for another Chelsea: WikiLeaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning was released from military prison after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence. She moved into a flat in Manhattan and bought an Xbox. As a precaution, she keeps the remote controls in a microwave when they’re not being used, since they contain microphones.

  As Chelsea FC and Chelsea Manning were celebrating, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea released a feminist children’s book, and the Chelsea Flower Show was under way. There were only eight show gardens present, down from 17. Alan Titchmarsh blamed concerns over Brexit forcing sponsors to pull out. Meanwhile, a survey showed that half of Britons were unable to name a single shrub. One entry for Plant of the Year was the world’s hottest chilli – so hot that if you were foolish enough to try it, it could cause a massive anaphylactic shock that would kill you. On the plus side, scientists hope the oil that can be extracted from it may ultimately serve as an anaesthetic for those allergic to conventional drugs.

  CHILDISHNESS▶

  See Uranus.

  CHINA▶

  For a board game that dented national pride, see AI; for being evicted by a telescope, see Aliens; for a potential war involving a third of the world’s population, see Bhutan; for an alienless Alien film, see Censorship; for training undercover children, see Espionage; for blowing up chunks of your own land, see Islands; for terrorist toys see Lego; for a number that wasn’t so lucky, see Licence Plates; for an ancient discipline defeated in 10 seconds, see Martial Arts; for confusing the president with his sworn enemy, see Mix-Ups; for upcoming missions to the moon, see Potatoes; for a trackless train, see Railways; for a giant, jam-loving bug, see Stick Insects; for a Messi experience, see Theme Parks; for a high-rise forest, see Trees; for zombies in taxis, see Uber; for dangerous toothpicks, see Weapons; for false friends, see Weddings; for an un-editable encyclopaedia, see Wikipedia; for someone who in no way resembles Winnie-the-Pooh, see Xi Jinping; for a literate scarecrow, see Zhou Youguang; and for polar bear poos, see Zoos.

  CIRCUSES▶

  The Ringling Bros. Circus played its final show, after complaining that US politics was bringing the word ‘circus’ into disrepute.

  During the presidential campaign, the circus’s head clown said, ‘You can do and say silly things or slap on colourful ties and pantsuits all you want, but that does not make you a Ringling Bros. clown.’ Less than a year later, the circus closed down for good.

  In the end it was the symbol of the Republican Party, the elephant, that did for the Greatest Show on Earth, which had been performing since the 19th century. After animal rights protests and multiple lawsuits, Ringling retired its pachyderms, and ticket sales slumped. One televangelist announced that the closing of the circus was a message from God that just as the circus died when the elephants departed, so America would fall if Trump left.

  The closure left hundreds of circus performers out of work. The brass band got their marching orders, the human cannonball was fired, and the elephants packed their trunks.* And many were left without a home, now that they were no longer able to live on the mile-long circus train that had once taken them from town to town. Resident trombonist Megan O’Malley captured the mood with her tweet: ‘Worst. Day. Ever.’

  In Darwin, Australia, a camel ran away from the circus and wrought havoc on the roads, holding up rush-hour traffic. It eventually made its way to a golf course, where it was caught on the ninth green.

  CITIZENSHIP▶

  A senator whose surname means ‘foreign sounding’ faced losing his job after finding out he might be part-foreign.

  Nick Xenophon* is a member of an Australian centrist political party called the Nick Xenophon Team, which was founded in 2006 by Nick Xenophon, and has three members in the Australian senate, one of whom is Nick Xenophon. However when Xenophon made a joke about being part-Cypriot at a book launch in July, it got into the papers, and soon questions were being asked about his nationality.

  It turns out that Xenophon is not Cypriot, but he might be British (he was born in Australia, but his father lived in Cyprus when it was a British colony). Therefore, unbeknownst to Xenophon, he may actually technically have UK citizenship, and under Australian rules people with dual-nationality cannot be senators. He was forced to go to court to decide if he could keep his job – one of a number of Australians who this year found their nationalities being questioned.

  Minister for Regional Development Fiona Nash, Minister for Resources Matt Canavan† and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce were all implicated in the scandal; as were Queensland MP Susan Lamb who found she may be part-British, and Green Party MP Larissa Waters who discovered she was part-Canadian. Waters had already hit the news earlier in the year by being the first Australian MP to breastfeed her baby in Parliament. She later said that she had moved a motion only moments after her daughter had ‘moved her own motion’.

  CLERGY, UNGODLY-SOUNDING▶

  For the priest from Cuntis, see Carnivals; for an archbishop called Pennisi, see Godfather.

  CLIMATE CHANGE

  Andy: Earlier this year, a study on climate change in the Arctic was cancelled. Any guesses as to why?

  Anna: Was it due to climate change?

  Andy: Basically, yes. A Canadian research trip was scheduled to study melting ice, but high temperatures meant the sea ice was moving so unpredictably that it would be too danger
ous for them to go.

  Anna: As in, it would be moving so fast it caught them unaware? Surely that’s not possible?

  Andy: Well, ice can be a problem at sea. I don’t know if you’ve seen Titanic.

  Dan: Was that a climate-change experiment too?

  James: Yeah, but they glossed over that in the movie.

  Dan: Extraordinary. Did you guys know that at 12 p.m. on January 20th, the second that Donald Trump officially became president, every single mention of climate change was wiped from the White House website? With one exception: Trump replaced it all with a note promising to abolish Obama’s climate-change policies.

  Andy: Sounds like he’s solved the problem already. Great news.

  James: Well, I read an article on that from researchers at Cornell. They found 74.4 per cent of Republicans believe climate change is real, but only 65 per cent believe global warming is happening. And when Trump pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, he tweeted about ‘global warming’ instead of ‘climate change’ – maybe because fewer of his supporters believe in it.

  Anna: Did you know, there are only two countries – other than America, when they leave – that are not signed up to the Paris climate agreement? And they’re Syria, which is in the middle of a war, and Nicaragua. Lots of people criticised Nicaragua when they heard, but actually the whole reason they didn’t sign is because they think the Paris Agreement didn’t go far enough. Nicaragua is hugely committed to renewable energy, so they’re the good guys here.

  Dan: When you said that about the Paris Agreement not going far enough, I thought Nicaragua had assumed it only covered the city of Paris.

  Andy: I am confident that that wasn’t it, Dan.

  James: Trump did attract a lot of attention for saying he’d pull America out of the Paris Agreement. Stephen Hawking said that his action will push the Earth over the brink, and we’ll become like Venus with temperatures of 250 degrees and raining sulphuric acid.

  Anna: OK, I for one think that is a bit alarmist.

  James: But he wasn’t alone. Even North Korea said it was the ‘height of egotism’ for Trump to pull out of the agreement. And that’s the country which has a 560-metre propaganda sign, visible from space, that says ‘Long Live General Kim Jong Un, the Shining Sun’.

  Anna: Presumably they meant ‘the height of egotism – to which we aspire’.

  CLOUDS▶

  A NASA rocket launch to create artificial clouds was delayed because it was too cloudy.

  However, after numerous failed attempts, NASA eventually launched 10 containers the size of soft-drink cans 118 miles into the sky, which then ejected turquoise and red vapour into the air, creating gigantic coloured clouds. The clouds were so large that despite being launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, they were visible from the ground 200 miles away in New York.

  The rockets – technically called Terrier-Improved Malemute rockets – were launched as part of a large-scale international programme to help scientists answer a rather worrying question: why is the Earth leaking nearly 90 tonnes of air every day into space?

  Earth’s magnetosphere has two gaping holes in it – called cusps – which allow our atmosphere to escape the planet. Scientists hope to get a better understanding of how this process occurs, by following the colourful clouds as they exit the cusps. Tracking them will also help us understand geomagnetic storms, as well as auroras, and help answer the question of why we actually have a magnetic field. It’s a good job we do: without a magnetosphere to deflect the sun’s particles, they would batter the Earth, and our planet would be a barren desert like Mars.

  Scientists found a planet called WASP-12b, which is covered in ruby and sapphire clouds. The planet’s clouds are 2,200-degree Celsius liquid droplets made of a substance called corundum – the material that forms rubies and sapphires on earth.

  COCK-UPS▶

  The biggest blunders of the last 12 months included, but were not limited to, the following:

  ▶ Australia was loaned an irreplaceable collection of 18th-century flowers from a Paris museum.

  Cock-up: Owing to a paperwork error, Australia’s biosecurity officers incinerated them on arrival.

  ▶ A new Polar Fox Military Combat Work Desert Boot was released.

  Cock-up: The boot had to be withdrawn when a customer discovered that the footprints it left included a swastika pattern.

  ▶ A Canadian politician sent a reply-all email to 100 civil servants concerning local infrastructure.

  Cock-up: The reply-all message he sent contained nothing but a picture of a naked woman with her legs spread.

  ▶ X-rated TV channel Babestation advertised a live sex chatline with an 098 prefix for viewers to call.

  Cock-up: Many Irish viewers forgot to use the international dialling code when calling, and as a result inundated the residents of the small Irish town of Westport in County Mayo, whose numbers began with 098 as well, with sexy late-night phone calls.

  ▶ Japanese government officials held a press conference to warn the public about a deadly tick, bringing a live one along with them for the media to see.

  Cock-up: The officials dropped the tick during the press call and were unable to find it. They were forced to spray the entire room with insecticide and leave it overnight.

  COINS▶

  The Bank of England’s gym lockers wouldn’t accept the new £1 coin.

  As a result of this blunder, for months, members who tried to use the ‘most secure coin in the world’ were left with valuables that were not secure.

  According to the Royal Mint each new £1 coin contains secret messages, secret images, a hologram and, it is rumoured, an anti-forgery code hidden on the Queen’s face. On the coin’s ‘tails’ side is an image of a rose, thistle, leek and shamrock that was drawn by a 15-year-old schoolboy, whose design was chosen following a nationwide competition set up by the Royal Mint. The Mint decided the winner. Had the vote been left to the public, we might now have a £1 coin with a full English breakfast on it. It featured prominently in the submissions, but was ruled out because, according to the Royal Mint’s chief engraver, the design had to be something ‘appropriate’.

  Another coin released this year was Canada’s new $2 piece: the world’s first glow-in-the-dark coin. Issued to mark the 150th anniversary of Canada’s birth, this coin also carries a design suggested by the public, with an end result that nicely illustrates the difference between British and Canadian tastes. Whereas the British, left to their own devices, would have come up with a £1 bacon-and-egg coin, the Canadians opted for one in which canoeists row across a golden lake beneath the Northern Lights. When viewed in the dark, the aurora borealis glows softly.

  CONDOMS▶

  A Chicago zoo tackled mass extinction by giving out free condoms.

  Lincoln Park Zoo teamed up with a group called the Center for Biological Diversity as part of the latter’s long-running campaign to slow human population growth, which they argue is causing mass extinctions. So the zoo gave out hundreds of condoms adorned with pictures of endangered animals. The front of the packets featured slogans saying things like ‘Wrap with care, save the polar bear’ or ‘Before it gets any hotter, remember the sea otter’. Each package contained two condoms, information about the species depicted on the outside, and suggestions of ways to solve the problem of unsustainable human population growth (such as wearing condoms more).

  Thieves in Las Vegas stole 30,000 condoms, 33 vibrating ‘prostate massagers’ and 48 vaginal beads. The company affected said in a statement: ‘What kind of party are these people having?! We could have done the sponsorship or something.’

  CONSTITUTION, US▶

  A man who received a C for an essay he wrote in 1982 had it re-marked to an A after successfully changing the US Constitution.

  While studying at the University of Texas in Austin 35 years ago, Gregory Watson wrote a paper arguing that a constitutional amendment proposed in 1789 (relating to Members of Congress�
�s salaries) could still be ratified. After getting a C grade, he spent the next decade proving his point by persuading the necessary number of states (38 in total) needed to approve it. He was successful, and it became the 27th, and most recent, amendment to the US Constitution. It had taken almost 203 years to be ratified – 199 years longer than the runner-up.

  Watson’s old tutor finally got wind of this, and on 4 March this year Watson received a document, signed by her, requesting that his C be changed to an A+. Unfortunately the university doesn’t offer plus and minus grades, but it did change his grade to an A.

  CORBYN, JEREMY▶

  Jeremy Corbyn is the Parliamentary Beard of the Year champion.

  He’s won the competition, organised by the Beard Liberation Front (BLF), a record seven times. On the most recent occasion it was with 64 per cent of the vote, slightly higher than he received in that year’s Labour leadership contest. The head of the BLF, Keith Flett, wants to see more parliamentary whiskers, and commented: ‘We always thought that David Cameron would have been vastly improved by having a beard, but there was some doubt as to whether that was ever possible.’

  A study published in April by the London School of Economics found that 69 per cent of newspaper articles that attack Corbyn mention his appearance, clothing or lifestyle – often referring to his facial hair. He’s the first leader of a mainstream British political party to have a beard since Labour Party founder Keir Hardie, who left office in 1908. This year, he met a beard rival when he took to the main stage at Glastonbury to give a speech. As part of it, he presented Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis with a signed copy of the Labour manifesto. Eavis won Beard of the Decade in 2009, narrowly beating Fidel Castro to the top spot.