It wasn’t supposed to play out this way. At 5.05pm in Augusta, Georgia, on Sunday 10 April, there was no indication that it would. No Englishman had won the Masters, arguably golf’s most coveted individual event, since 1996. The American Jordan Spieth, who held a five-stroke lead, was in the midst of an extraordinary run, spanning 12 months. Step forward Danny Willett, who seized an opportunity in the most emphatic way.

Then 28, Willett had enjoyed a decent professional career without scaling great heights. The Yorkshireman had played in the Masters only once before, when he tied in 38th place out of 97. But as Spieth stumbled, it was Willett who breezed to the summit of the leaderboard, with a closing round of 67 that took the title by the relatively comfortable margin of three shots.

Just 12 days earlier, Willett’s wife had given birth to the couple’s first child, Zach. “I always said I wouldn’t come here if Zach wasn’t born by now,” Willett said. “Fortunately, he listened to my prayers and came early. It’s just been the most ridiculously awesome 12 days.” Ewan Murray

Boaty McBoatface is born

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Polar research ship Boaty McBoatface, renamed the Sir David Attenborough. Photograph: NERC/PA

New rule: from 2017 onwards, no referendums. Because it always ends in misery. Brexit proved that, but the ballad of Boaty McBoatface proved it harder. The Natural Environment Research Council was about to unveil a new £200m polar research vessel, and asked the public to name it. The public – or at least the LOLsy, internet-dwelling slice of the population that Instagrams coffeeshop blackboards – decided to name it Boaty McBoatface. In the end, Boaty McBoatface gained 124,000 votes, four times as many as its nearest rival, and the vessel’s fate looked set.

But then it didn’t, because science minister Jo Johnson decided the whole thing was silly. He named it the RSS Sir David Attenborough, hoping that aligning the craft with our greatest national treasure would calm everyone down. When that didn’t work, he promised to name one of the ship’s remotely controlled submersibles Boaty McBoatface instead, but it was too little too late.

Still, this wasn’t the end. Boaty McBoatface is a folk hero now. He is Robin Hood. He is Wat Tyler. Whenever there’s an injustice in the world, we will point our ears towards the wind and hear the words “Boaty McBoatface”. Stuart Heritage

The pope invites 12 Syrian refugees to Rome

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pope Francis welcomes a group of Syrian refugees. Photograph: Reuters

When the pope visited Lesbos in April, he returned with three families. At first they lived in a refuge run by the Sant’Egidio charity; now the three families have paperwork, a titolo di viaggio allowing free travel in Europe, and homes of their own. “It’s what I dreamed of,” says Nour Essa, 31, who lives with her husband Hasan and son Riad in a two-room flat in Rome’s city centre. Bringing up a two-year-old in shared quarters had been a strain, and made Nour feel she couldn’t parent as she chose. Today, Riad attends nursery and is starting to talk. “We speak only Arabic to him,” Nour says. “He replies to us only in Italian.” A new life comes more easily to children.

Are they happier now? “We are better, but we feel homeless,” Nour says. “Your studies, all your efforts, are thrown away because you must initiate a new life. You are like a child.” She studied microbiology for five years in Damascus and two years postgraduate in France; in Italy she must start again from the third year of an undergraduate degree. Hasan, a garden designer, must study architecture before he can practise in Italy; he attends university in Rome.

The second family, Suhila Ayiad and Ramy Alshakarji, live alongside a community of nuns. Suhila is learning Italian; their 16-year-old son thrives and wants to study dentistry, while their 18-year-old is “living the teenage years he couldn’t live in Syria”, a Sant’Egidio spokesperson says diplomatically. Little Quds, Ramy and Suhila’s youngest, is at school.

The third family, Osama Qawqaji and Wafa Eid, live a long way south of the charity’s language school. If they integrate, it will be through their children, the spokesperson says. “Probably they are planning to go back to Syria when they can.” Paula Cocozza

Hillsborough gets a verdict

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A banner after the Hillsborough verdict. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

To the terrible date of 15 April 1989, when 96 people died and hundreds more were injured and traumatised at an FA Cup semi-final, the bereaved Hillsborough families finally succeeded in adding 26 April 2016 as a historic landmark: the day the truth about the disaster was finally, legally established. Fully 27 years from the day their loved ones died, they crowded into the converted courtroom on a Warrington business park, all that suffering compressed into an awful wait for a jury to answer yes, or no, to 14 questions.

Questions six and seven were the heart of the matter, deciders in the families’ and survivors’ implacable struggle against the lies of South Yorkshire police, whose officers had organised a campaign to blame the victims, even as people were dying at the football ground. In 1991, South Yorkshire police made that case relentlessly at the first inquest, claiming the people who had paid to attend the event in an expectation of safety had drunk too much and somehow been recklessly too eager to watch the match. The families had to pay for their own legal representation; they could collectively afford £142,000 for a single barrister, pitted against the battery of publicly funded police lawyers, and the jury verdict was accidental death. This time, Theresa May’s Home Office provided funding for two rows of forensic and persistently combative lawyers to oppose the same allegations made again by the police.

This adversarial rerun of the old, already discredited police stories stretched the new inquests to two years, the longest case ever heard by a jury in British history. It had been agony for the families, forced to revisit every detail of the day their lives were devastated.

Finally, verdict day arrived. The forewoman of the jury answered questions one to five as expected, agreeing that there were appalling safety deficiencies in Sheffield Wednesday’s squalid Leppings Lane away end. Then came question six: were the 96 people unlawfully killed due to criminal gross negligence by the police officer in charge, Ch Supt David Duckenfield? “Yes,” the forewoman agreed, calmly, and the families’ years of struggle came to be vindicated. Next, question seven, key to whether this day would deliver justice or be another terrible chapter: did the behaviour of Liverpool supporters contribute to the dangerous situation? “No,” the forewoman said, with a kind note in her voice. The reaction was a gleeful outpouring of relief. People cheered, wept, hugged each other. For so many bleak years, this had been unthinkable, and now it really had come to pass: the lies had been overhauled by the truth.Outside, blinking, disbelieving, with film crews and photographers in front of them, a group of family members instinctively started to sing the Liverpool club anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone. Ian Burke was 17 when his father, Henry, a builder, was among the 96 who died so needlessly, leaving bereft another son, daughter and a grief-stricken wife. Ian had taken time off work to sit through almost every day of the inquests; quiet, racked with stress. Just days before the verdicts, aged only 44, he had a heart attack.He is still suffering heart-related health problems, yet look at the film or photographs of the group outside the court on 26 April 2016, and there he is in the middle, with his suit and tie on, arm aloft, singing the beloved song, and smiling. David Conn

Leicester win the Premier League

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Leicester City fans celebrate their Premier League win. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA

You wouldn’t have dared suggest it as a Hollywood script: too unlikely. The unfashionable football, a toe-poke from relegation the previous season, 5,000-1 outsiders to win it this time round, goes on to beat the moneyed glory boys to the Premier League title. Impossible. You’d have got better odds on Piers Morgan being named Arsenal manager (2,500-1, since you asked). Yet it did happen. Leicester City’s the name, romance is the game.

And not just any old romance. Romance in the most cynical, spendthrift league in the world, where Manchester City regularly spend £40m on defenders who can’t defend, Manchester United sell Paul Pogba for nothing (and later resign him for £89m without a blink), and Chelsea sack two managers a week for fun. And here was little Leicester City, a raggle-taggle army of rejects, has-beens and unknowns, managed by an elderly Italian nicknamed the Tinkerman because he was so indecisive, winning the league title.

They didn’t even inch their way to the premiership, they blew their rivals away, winning 23 games, losing only three and finishing 10 points clear of their closest rivals, Arsenal. Jamie Vardy, who had been playing non-league football for Fleetwood Town three years earlier, scored 24 goals and won a place in the England team; little known Riyad Mahrez won player of the year; thirtysomething has-been Robert Huth (long since rejected by Chelsea) forged a mighty partnership with thirtysomething never-been Wes Morgan (who had spent 10 years at Nottingham Forest and ran tattoo parlours on the side).

To say Leicester were penniless is untrue; all Premier League teams have money. But to put it in context, their squad cost £52.8m, just over one 10th of Manchester City’s.

After Christmas 2015, the impossible became ever more probable. By March, it was a likelihood, by April an inevitability, and on 2 May they were crowned champions. The city was painted blue: foreign film crews embedded themselves in the East Midlands and taught themselves how to pronounce Leicester; literary bigwigs such as Julian Barnes waxed poetic about their favourite club; and Gary Lineker promised to present Match Of The Day in his smalls (he did).

Order has been restored since those heady days. As I write, Leicester (with virtually the same team) are 14th in the league, four points off the relegation zone, with three wins and seven defeats. But it was wonderful while it lasted. Simon Hattenstone

Sadiq Khan becomes London’s first Muslim mayor

Facebook Twitter Pinterest London mayor Sadiq Khan. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

“This is our Obama moment,” said Aisha from Tooting the day after the capital elected Sadiq Khan as mayor. For many other Londoners, it was the triumph of hope over fear, following an ugly campaign waged by Khan’s chief rival, Zac Goldsmith.

In a year characterised by the electoral gains of people and parties associated with the right, racism, xenophobia and nationalism, Khan’s decisive victory in May was a sweet, bright moment for those on the flipside of an increasingly binary political landscape. The contest was principally between Khan, the Muslim son of a bus driver and seamstress who grew up on a council estate with seven siblings, and Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire businessman and Eton alumnus.

On the advice of Conservative strategists, Goldsmith sought to portray Khan as a friend of Islamic extremists. The Tory candidate said Khan had “given platforms and oxygen and cover and excuses” to extremists. “London would be safer if I’m mayor,” he told voters.

Khan, meanwhile, celebrated the capital’s diversity. “I am a Londoner, I am European, I am British, I am English, I am of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband,” he told voters, adding: “We do not just tolerate each other in London; we respect each other.”

When the votes were counted, Khan had the support of 57% of Londoners, compared with 43% who voted for Goldsmith. With around 1.3m votes, Khan also had the biggest personal mandate of any politician in UK history. Harriet Sherwood

Fabric nightclub gets unexpected champions

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fabric clubbers Wladyslaw Nykiel and Stanislawa Zapasnik. Photograph: Courtesy of Jacob Husley

At 10pm on a Sunday in May, Jacob Husley was setting up at London nightclub Fabric for his weekly house and techno night WetYourSelf! when he passed an elderly couple on the stairs: “They were walking down slowly and she was on crutches. I asked, ‘Are you OK?’ but they just smiled and kept going.” Husley, 36, who has DJed at Fabric for eight years, checked with security, who said the couple had turned up with tickets.

Husley went back in to find them at the bar. They were Polish and didn’t speak English. “I wanted to offer them a drink,” he says. “They had tequila shots and I thought, ‘This couple are wicked!’ But I still had a feeling there was a mistake.”

As the club filled up, Husley took them to the VIP lounge and when a Polish friend arrived, he had him translate. “They said they’d always dreamed of going to one of the big, great nightclubs in London.” They’d bought tickets online in Poland and were staying with their niece in London. Husley offered them another drink and when they asked for tea, fetched some from a cafe down the street.

Other guests embraced the first-time visitors. “They didn’t stay in the VIP area. He kept venturing out to the dancefloor and everyone was giving him lots of attention. She sat by the bar and couldn’t dance, but people were saying hello. They definitely enjoyed themselves.” At 5am, they took Husley up on his offer of a taxi home.

The next day, Husley put a photo of the couple on Facebook. It went viral. “I think it inspired people,” he says. “They posted to their friends, ‘This is us when we’re old.’” The story got international coverage, but Husley didn’t know the couple’s names and had no way of contacting them.

Then, a few weeks later, he received a letter from pensioners Wladyslaw Nykiel, 82, and Stanislawa Zapasnik, 79. Nykiel wrote: “We had a wonderful time dancing with young Londoners who welcomed us very warmly. There are no words to describe the atmosphere and great fun [of Fabric].”

When Islington council closed Fabric in September, Husley got back in touch. Nykiel sent a picture of him and Zapasnik holding a #savefabric placard. Fabric will now reopen on 6 January – and Husley has made sure the couple have tickets. Candice Pires

The vote for Brexit reveals some silver linings

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sarah Olney wins Richmond Park for the Lib Dems. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

Two years ago, most of England was asleep, something that hit me every time I travelled there from Scotland. In the summer of 2014, people north of the border were in the midst of their referendum, and life was full of talk about what was at stake. I’d immerse myself in the hurly-burly, then fly home to a country that felt sedated, where politicians still spoke in lukewarm platitudes.

Now look. In the wake of the EU referendum, politics in England and Wales is crackling with life. I travel around the country for the Guardian, and getting people to talk used to be like pulling teeth. Now, I mention the EU, Theresa May or Trump and off the conversation goes: people are awake.

This is not all on the pro-Brexit side, by any means. Remainers are starting to find their voices, too. New cross-party “progressive” groups have sprung up in Brighton, London and East Anglia, set on opposing the vision shared by the Tories and Ukip. In November, the Green party had the sense to stand down in the Richmond Park byelection, with the aim of kicking out the pro-Brexit Tory “independent” Zac Goldsmith, thereby playing its part in his defeat.

A new group, More United, is raising money for candidates from “the progressive centre”, pledged to a pro-European, egalitarian future. Meanwhile, the pressure group Compass, which began inside the Labour party, then reached beyond it, is to start making the case against old-fashioned party divides and in favour of what it calls progressive alliances. As well as the Greens’ co-leader Caroline Lucas, a handful of the most forward-thinking Labour MPs are giving it quiet support.

If the next few years are going to see a big thrashing out of what England is, the process will not be the preserve of the right. Old politics (the endless talk of “hard-working families”, “going forward” and the rest) is pretty much finished. That’s a good thing. And if what has replaced it is proving visceral and primary-coloured, there are voices on the left who can meet that challenge. Of course it will be difficult; the word “struggle” is part of the progressive vocabulary for a reason. But isn’t it better to be awake than complacently snoozing? John Harris

Tim Peake takes one giant leap for Britain

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tim Peake runs the London Marathon in space. Photograph: ESA/AP

On 15 January, Peake performed the first British spacewalk outside the International Space Station, an event that took a dramatic turn when his colleague Tim Kopra’s helmet began to fill with water. Peake had to take the lead and bring the other astronaut back to safety from the outer panels of the space station. He did this with the calmness they seem to breed in the bones of astronauts; they appear to be chosen these days not just for their ability to perform in ludicrously demanding environments, but to smile and enthusiastically explain things to awestruck children while doing it.

For six months, until he came back down to Earth in June, Peake did just that, his heavily scheduled days split between experiments and outreach. He sent videos to schools; ran a London Marathon in orbit; he got people in Britain excited.

And that, in the end, was the point. Peake was not the first British astronaut in space; that honour belongs to Helen Sharman, who spent a week on the Mir space station in 1991, and there have been five Britons on space shuttle missions (though they had to take US citizenship). But Peake was the first astronaut whose trip was directly funded by the British government, through the European Space Agency. Where our financial commitment to a pan-European body lies now, post-Brexit, remains to be seen. But for a few months there was a man from Chichester in space, and you just ask a nearby eight-year-old how cool that is. Dara Ó Briain

The ozone layer starts to heal

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paradise Bay in Antarctica. Photograph: All Canada Photos/Alamy

As the world contemplates the calamitous prospect of Donald Trump unravelling the landmark Paris climate agreement, we should take comfort in the fact that another international accord has begun remedying one of our biggest environmental messes.

Scientists reported this year that the ozone hole above Antarctica, ripped open by our use of a group of chemical compounds, has started healing – good news that is the fruit of the 1987 Montreal Protocol. This was when countries agreed the deal to first freeze and later phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), mostly in aerosols and refrigeration. Because the ozone layer protects us from ultraviolet light, the UN estimates the CFC phase-out has avoided 2m annual cases of skin cancer.

The hole has not vanished: it still opens from September to November, only more slowly. Experts believe there is still a way to go. But “by 2060 you’ll have almost no years with an ozone hole”, said Susan Solomon, who led the study published in Science magazine. “Maybe one in every 15 years, but it won’t be every year – bang, bang, bang – like it has been since the mid-80s.”

For Solomon, the healing of the hole is proof that the world can come together to tackle big environmental problems. “We made a mistake, and countries were willing to put their shoulders to the wheel and figure out how to fix it, and we did.”

The Montreal Protocol did have unintended consequences: the hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that largely replaced CFCs contribute to climate change, too. In October, 170 countries met in Uganda and reached a deal to fix that. Under the Kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol, HFCs will also ultimately be phased out, which some estimates say could avoid up to 0.5C of global warming. US secretary of state John Kerry hailed the deal as “a monumental step forward”. Adam Vaughan

• Where did it all go right? For a more positive view of the world in 2017, follow the Guardian’s Half Full online series, with reports on innovative ideas and solutions to the challenges of the day. Wishing you all a happier new year.