However, this year the park was forced to drop the idea of creating a simulated ‘iceberg experience’ for paying customers. The theme park’s founder, Su Shaojun, had said he wanted people to experience the sinking: ‘We will let people experience water coming in using sound and light effects … They will think, “The water will drown me. I must escape for my life.”’
But when relatives of the deceased made it clear that they were very unhappy about the idea, Su announced the replica sinking would not go ahead. The park later clarified that the replica would be ‘respectful’. The daughter of one of the Titanic’s stewards said, ‘I feel they could have replicated another liner – it’s in poor taste.’ One British Titanic Society member sympathised with the theme park, saying there had clearly been no intention to cause offence, and that most Chinese people only knew about the Titanic through the 1997 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Meanwhile, in Japan, a theme park has started offering a service where you can beat up bad guys. In Hirakata Park’s ‘new-style flash mobs’, a pair of actors dressed like thugs will approach you and try to grab your boyfriend or girlfriend, at which point you can see them off and presumably impress your other half.
China is planning a theme park based entirely on footballer Lionel Messi. The Messi Experience Park will have 20 indoor and outdoor activities, to encourage young people in China to take up the sport.
The sacred Indian city of Mathura is planning a ‘Krishna Land’, a theme park like Disneyland but based on the Hindu god Krishna.
TIES▶
Male Australian politicians have to wear ties at all times, unless they’re wearing a safari suit.
The rule came to light this year, as parliaments around the world wondered if they should modernise and dispense with their formal dress.* The odd Australian regulation dates back to 1977 when a number of MPs decided that, due to the heat, they should be allowed to wear light, khaki-coloured clothes rather than a suit and tie. Back then, one safari-suit-wearing politician, Jack Melloy, was called a ‘hippy’ and told to leave the chamber, but the rules were changed and today any Aussie MP who doesn’t want to wear a tie can choose the safari suit instead. Almost nobody does.
Donald Trump also commented on the subject, saying that he wanted people in the White House to be ‘sharply dressed’, with men wearing ties. The president famously wears his tie extremely long. It’s not clear why, but Patrick Grant, creative director of the Savile Row tailors Norton & Sons, told the Daily Mirror: ‘The way Trump’s tie swings pendulously around his crotch is phallic and deeply suggestive.’
In Congress, where rules are stricter still and women are expected to wear long sleeves, more than 30 congresswomen on both sides of the aisle wore sleeveless dresses to protest, defending their ‘right to bare arms’.
Ireland also looked into the dress code for the Dáil (lower house of parliament). A research paper looked at 40 parliaments around the world, and it emerged that 16 (including Portugal, Israel and the EU) had no rules, while 24 (including the UK, Spain and France) had strict regulations. In the end the Dáil did at least ban members from wearing slogans. Perhaps it should have banned ties, too: in December last year, Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh was making a speech on the serious topic of asbestos exposure, when he was continually interrupted by his own musical tie playing ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ and ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’.
For Australian politicians with problematic foreign ties, see Citizenship.
TINDER▶
The last known male northern white rhino on the planet joined Tinder.
Confusingly named ‘Sudan’ but from neighbouring Kenya, his profile describes him as ‘the most eligible bachelor in the world’ and states, ‘I don’t mean to be too forward but the fate of my species literally depends on me.’ Tinder uploaded the profile in a bid to raise £7 million for conservation and fertility treatments for white rhinos. Swiping right on him automatically donates funds towards assisted reproductive techniques for Sudan, since attempts to get him to mate have failed.
While some are swiping to help an endangered rhino, other Tinder users are not swiping at all – instead hiring someone to do the work for them. Fantastic Services is a company that specialises in cleaning and pest control, but has branched out into dating. Its Dating Debugging Service charges £30 for a consultation, after which they take over your Tinder profile and weed out undesirable matches by swiping left or right on 500 people, based on what you’ve told them about yourself. It costs £15 for every subsequent 500 swipes.
Tinder got a new rival when a man called Shed Simove set up an app called Shinder on which he’s the only male. The app’s tagline is ‘Quality, Not Quantity’. Other men can theoretically sign up, but if they do they are greeted with a message informing them about Shed’s heterosexuality, and cannot contact any women. Shed received a notice of threatened opposition from Tinder, which thought he was infringing its trademark. He also got a letter from the manufacturer Schindler requesting that he avoid making any lifts or escalators.
TOILET PAPER, USED▶
Every month for the last 20 years, someone has been mailing Gary Lineker a single sheet of used toilet paper.
The ex-footballer has no idea who is doing it. News of the dirty poo-mailer only emerged when cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew sent the tweet ‘Can I ask the charming individual who for 10 years has sent me a soiled piece of toilet paper every Test [to] now address the envelope correctly?’ His complaint was that the anonymous mailer has not been including Agnew’s new MBE honour when addressing the envelope. Lineker then got in touch with Agnew to compare experiences: both, apparently, are receiving their anonymous sheets from someone in Bath.
While the identity of that particular culprit remains a mystery, Italian police officers had more luck in tracking down two other poo criminals who, for the last two years, had been mailing threatening letters that often included sheets of excrement-stained toilet paper to the directors of a zoo, as well as to politicians and ‘thousands of celebrities’. Police managed to analyse the handwriting on the envelopes, worked out that the perpetrators were a 71-year-old former policeman and his partner, and swooped in to make their bust as the offender was dropping one of his poo-mails into a postbox. Back at his house, police discovered 110 more envelopes pre-packed and ready to go.
TOILETS▶
For flushing away your loved ones, see Ashes; for ancient temple bathroom robots, see Facial Recognition; for Martian loos, see IKEA; for Don’s Johns, see Inauguration; for a running toilet roll, see Marathon, London; for the students too embarrassed to defecate, see Music; for the Russian navy’s faulty facilities, see Queen Elizabeth, HMS; for running out of loo roll, see Shrinkflation; for toilet-paper-hoarding politicians, see Venezuela; and for flushing in the night, see YouGov.
TRADEMARKS▶
Mother Teresa’s signature look was trademarked by her nuns.
The saint’s iconic blue-rimmed and white cotton sari was successfully trademarked on behalf of her holy order, the Missionaries of Charity, by their lawyer, Biswajit Sarkar. Twenty years ago, Sarkar also trademarked Mother Teresa’s name.
The move comes after the nuns complained that businesses were still using Mother Teresa’s image for commercial gain. A school was being run in her name in Nepal; a priest raising funds in Romania used her order’s name; and shops near the mission’s headquarters in Kolkata told customers that any proceeds from sales of Mother Teresa memorabilia would be donated to the order (which they weren’t). Even a cooperative bank in India decided to name itself after her.
Sarkar said he would take ‘severe’ legal action against anyone using the design without permission, and that his immediate plan was to get Amazon India to remove Mother Teresa children’s costumes from sale.
Mother Teresa wasn’t the only celebrity whose image was the subject of a legal decision this year: in America Kylie Minogue and Kylie Jenner fought over the name Kylie. Jenner wanted to trademark it in th
e US, but Minogue said it would be damaging to her brand and confuse people because she already owns various Kylie-themed trademarks in the US, including ‘Kylie Minogue Darling’ (the name of her perfume), ‘Lucky – the Kylie Minogue musical’, ‘Kylie Minogue’ and ‘kylie.com’. Minogue’s lawyers described their client as an ‘internationally renowned performing artist, humanitarian and breast cancer activist’ and Jenner as a ‘secondary reality television personality’.
A trademark ruling in the chocolate industry has cleared the way for copy KitKats. Nestlé tried to trademark the shape of a KitKat in the UK, but Cadbury argued there was nothing distinctive about it and that it should therefore be allowed to use the same shape. After months of deliberating, a 16,000-word ruling found in favour of Cadbury.
TREES▶
The former prime minister of Georgia has been digging up famous trees and replanting them in his garden.
Explaining that ‘giant trees are my entertainment’, Bidzina Ivanishvili searches out the largest, rarest and oldest ones in the country, digs them up, loads them upright on to trucks and boats, and brings them to his own personal arboretum. He reimburses the trees’ previous owners, in one case swapping a eucalyptus for a computer. Sometimes the logistics cause problems: on one occasion a magnolia tree he was transporting got entangled in a eucalyptus growing on the verge, meaning the whole road had to be closed.
Trees are being used to fight climate change and pollution all over the world. In 2016, 800,000 volunteers in India planted 50 million trees in 24 hours as part of the country’s Paris Accord commitment. They beat the previous tree-planting record by more than 49 million. This year, they did better still, managing 66 million trees in a single day.
China is planning to build a city of skyscrapers completely covered in trees to form ‘vertical forests’ that will absorb 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and generate 800 tonnes of oxygen a year. In more experimental mode, researchers at Bristol University started pumping a forest full of carbon dioxide in a 10-year project to establish the extent to which plants can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Even the Taliban are doing their bit. The Islamic fundamentalists broke their usual protocol to release a rare public statement in February encouraging Afghans to plant more trees. The message was delivered in the name of the Taliban leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, who said the undertaking would benefit the Earth and please Allah.
Some tree-planting has its drawbacks. In Aberdeenshire a council had to apologise after planting an orchard’s worth of trees all over a community football pitch. A council spokesperson said, ‘It would seem that we were barking up the wrong tree with plans for this site.’
The 650-year-old Oak Józef, whose trunk concealed a Jewish family hiding from the Nazis during the Second World War, and which has appeared on Polish banknotes, was named ‘European Tree of the Year’. It narrowly beat the Brimmon Oak in Powys, whose claim to fame is that it’s now not going to be cut down to make way for a bypass.
A Cook Islander was crowned the first ever world champion coconut tree climber. The man scaled an 8-metre tree in 5.62 seconds, just one 100th of a second ahead of the second-place contestant.
TRUDEAU, JUSTIN▶
Canadian diplomats were told to stop using cardboard cut-outs of the Prime Minister at parties.
Since 2016, Canadian diplomats across the USA have ordered 14 life-size cardboard cut-outs of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to display at events. These have proved very popular, but when the opposition party found that 10 consulates had spent a total of $1,900 (£1,100) on them it complained, saying the whole thing was a vanity project. The Global Affairs department quickly stepped in, asking embassies to stop using them. Opposition MP John Brassard said a two-dimensional cut-out was ‘a perfect metaphor for everything that Justin Trudeau represents’. The replica Trudeaus have gone into storage.
The cut-outs were cheap compared to Canada’s birthday expenditure. Canada150, the 150-year commemoration of Canadian independence, featured celebrations that included a giant dreamcatcher, giant plant sculptures, a giant flag, a giant puppet show, a giant sweater for a statue of a cow, and a giant game of snakes and ladders. The snakes and ladders cost $416,000 (£246,000), or 3,065 cardboard Justin Trudeaus.
Friends star Matthew Perry revealed that he beat up Trudeau when they were at school together. Trudeau – who once knocked out an opposition politician in a charity boxing match – offered Perry a rematch. Perry turned down the offer, saying it was unfair given that Trudeau has access to an army.
TRUMP, DONALD▶
For a blatant exaggeration of size, see Advertising; for his impact on US stock prices, see Amazon; for the only app on Trump’s phone, see Apps; for the many possible border-wall designs, see Border Wall; for denials of global warming, see Climate Change; for Twitterstorms over made-up words, see Covfefe; for Twitter-related synonyms, see Dickheads; for his effect on American marriages, see Divorce; for Trump’s first name, see Donalds; for his impact on the safety of the planet, see Doomsday; for his new museum exhibit, see Failures; for how he spends too much of his time, see Golf; for him driving Americans to New Zealand, see Immigration; for more blatant exaggeration, see Inauguration; for his coinage of a phrase first recorded in 1819, see Inventions; for an unlikely fan of his book, see Korea, North; for more than 133 court cases, see Lawsuits, Trump’s 134; for Trump’s catchphrase on an anus, see MAGA; for confusing a prime minister with a glamour model, see May, Theresa; for confusing other world leaders with each other, see Mix-Ups; for his legal tussle over the iTrump, see Music; for giving everyone his number, see Phones; for a suspiciously familiar inauguration cake, see Plagiarism; for a relatively successful trip to Saudi Arabia, see Protests, Non-Dirty; for his alleged Russian ties, see Russia Investigation; for a book of his poetry, see Speeches; for what people would give up to get him impeached, see Surveys; for his pendulously phallic clothes, see Ties; for a button with its own room, see Trump Tower; if you actually are Donald Trump and you’re reading this, don’t see Unpopular; for yak and squirrel hair on Trump’s head, see Waxworks; for literal fake news, see White House, Winter; for being cursed, see Witchcraft; for getting a history lesson, see Xi Jinping; for his Hogwarts house, see YouGov; for another leader who started on The Apprentice, see You’re Fired!; and for the one person he actually could beat in the 2020 election, see Zuckerberg, Mark.
TRUMP TOWER▶
America’s nuclear button got its own million-dollar flat in New York.
This year the White House Military Office rented an entire apartment in Trump Tower for the nuclear ‘football’ – the black satchel containing the device that can launch a thermonuclear strike – along with its human handlers. When the lease was eventually published, it was discovered that the nuclear button and its support team will have access to the privately owned flat in Trump Tower for at least 18 months, at a cost of $2.39 million ($130,000 a month).
US government rules dictate that the president has to have vital services – like the nuclear button – near him at all times wherever he goes. So it seemed perfectly reasonable, in theory at least, that the button should be given space in Trump’s New York base. The only problem was that for the first seven months of his presidency Trump didn’t spend a single night in the tower, meaning the button didn’t visit until he did in August.
Trump’s skyscrapers have become slightly less popular since the president’s inauguration (see Advertising). Protests at various Trump buildings included a mass mooning of the Trump Tower Chicago by hundreds of protesters, dubbed the ‘Rump Against Trump’.
One Direction’s Liam Payne revealed that Donald Trump once kicked the band out of the Trump Tower Hotel in New York for refusing to meet his daughter, despite the fact that their manager only turned down the request because they were asleep at the time.
TUNNELS▶
Scientists in Greenland are building underground labs using 40-metre-long balloons.
Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Professor of Glacio
logy at the University of Copenhagen, has been testing his unique lab-building method since 2012, and this year scientists adopted the technique for the first time. Steffensen says it’s like making a hot dog. First a trench is dug out using a snow blower (he calls this the ‘bun’), then a balloon is placed inside and inflated (the hot dog). Once fully inflated it is completely covered in snow (the condiments). Left for a few days, the snow hardens sufficiently to function as a roof. The balloon is then deflated and the engineers are left with a giant cylindrical tunnel.
So far the new technique has been a massive success, creating tunnels that are more structurally sound and longer lasting than any previous method. As a result, other polar research groups are looking into using it. A team in Antarctica has ordered two balloons and Steffensen is asking Greenland’s parliament for permission to use the balloons to make ice hotels.
Another tunnel innovation this year came from Norway, where engineers solved the problem of navigating the notoriously dangerous waters of the Stad peninsula. It suffers from the highest winds in the country and has always been a nightmare for sailors (even the Vikings weren’t up for crossing it, choosing instead to lift their ships out of the sea and carry them across land). After centuries of debate, Norway has decided to drill through the peninsula to build the world’s first tunnel for ships.
The single-lane Stad tunnel will be 1.7 kilometres long, will cost $235 million to build, and will be able to accommodate ships weighing up to 16,000 tonnes. It will also feature emergency phones on the walls, just in case a ship gets stuck and need to call for help.
The Book of the Year Page 26
