This year – thanks mainly to the man in the White House – there have been so many weird stories piling up we’ve erased some of the most notable from our brains

No one would ever claim that 2017 was a slow news year. In fact, so much happened that events that seemed like a big deal at the time have already faded from our memories, crowded out by even bigger stories. When the very fabric of western democracy seems threatened, it’s hard to recall a simpler time – last spring – when everybody was all worked up about Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi advert.

Here then, are just some of the big stories you may have forgotten to remember from 2017.

Trump’s bizarre inaugural speech

Inaugural addresses are typically a time for memorable, hopeful rhetoric about the challenges facing the nation. John F Kennedy told Americans to: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Franklin D Roosevelt said: “The only thing we to have to fear is fear itself.” Donald J Trump, on the other hand, chose to deliver a scripted rant about what he called “American carnage”: “Rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge.”

When it finally came to an end, George W Bush – no orator himself – was reported to have said: “That was some weird shit.” It was, but there was much weirder to come – so much weirder that the speech now seems comparatively statesmanlike, as long as you don’t compare it with any other inaugural address ever.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Candidate Bobby Smith arrives with Elmo on 8 June at the polling station in Maidenhead where Theresa May was due to vote. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The UK general election

Was that really this year? To be fair, all the voting does tend to get a bit blurred: the previous general election was only in 2015, and then there was that whole referendum thing the next summer. One could be forgiven for forgetting that last spring’s snap election was that recent. It’s not as if it was without incident. An overconfident Theresa May saw her healthy majority wiped out, Jeremy Corbyn turned a narrow defeat into a sort of victory, Nick Clegg lost his seat and Vince Cable got his back.

The rise and fall of the Mooch

In any other year the 10-day gaffe-strewn tenure of White House communications director Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci would have stood out for its sheer oddness. In 2017, it failed to make the top 10 most surreal moments. Nobody thought hiring the dementedly outspoken Scaramucci was a good idea, and that was before he got on the phone to a reporter and compared himself favourably with Steve Bannon by saying, “I’m not trying to suck my own cock.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anthony Scaramucci after he was fired by Donald Trump. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

In his brief time on the job, the Mooch was forced to defend past tweets in which he had called Trump a “hack politician”, and his wife filed for divorce shortly after she gave birth to their child while Scaramucci was on Air Force One with the president. He was entertaining while he lasted, but nobody misses him.

Trump’s speech to the Boy Scouts

In terms of weirdness, it certainly eclipsed his inaugural address, but Trump doesn’t like to rest on his laurels – he may not yet have said the stupidest thing he’s going to say in 2017. Historians may still choose his July Boy Scout Jamboree address to illustrate the moment the wheels came off Trump’s presidency. In a rambling speech, he railed against fake news and Hillary Clinton before embarking on a long, senseless anecdote about a New York property developer that sounded like the start of a blue nightclub set: “Sold his company for a tremendous amount of money. And he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. I won’t go any more than that, because you’re Boy Scouts so I’m not going to tell you what he did. Should I tell you? You’re Boy Scouts, but you know life.” Forgettable in the grand scheme of things perhaps, but still chilling.

The Uber ban



Remember when that didn’t happen? You still run into the occasional person who thinks that Uber cars have been banished from the streets of London, because they only heard half the story. It’s true that in September, Transport for London declined to renew Uber’s licence to operate in the capital, saying it was not a “fit and proper” car-hire operator. However, Uber appealed the decision, allowing the service to continue without disruption, which is probably what made this story so forgettable. One for next year, maybe.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A painting by Ralph Heimans of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

Prince Philip’s retirement



The Duke of Edinburgh retired from public life in August, carrying out his last solo engagement – his 22,219th – after 70 years of royal service. In the end, the moment passed without much fanfare, although the Telegraph’s website jumped the gun with a bigger story, accidentally posting the headline “HOLD HOLD HOLD Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Dies Aged XX”.

British Airways’ IT chaos



If you were caught up in it, it’s unlikely you’ve forgotten. One Saturday last May, British Airways was forced to cancel all its flights out of Heathrow and Gatwick, causing mayhem. The problem was a global IT systems failure, which was reportedly caused by somebody accidentally unplugging the power supply. We never did find out exactly what happened – fortunately for BA, 2017 turned out to be a good year to bury bad news.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kellyanne Conway’s invention of the Bowling Green massacre spurred some creative responses. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

The Bowling Green massacre

You have two excuses for not remembering this particular event: it didn’t happen in 2017, and it also didn’t happen. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway invented the incident over the course of three separate interviews back in February, while defending the president’s Muslim travel ban, referring to two Iraqi nationals as “the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre”.

It’s true that back in 2011, two Iraqi men were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky, after they attempted to send money and weapons to al-Qaida in Iraq, but they did not – and had no plan to – carry out an attack in Bowling Green or anywhere else in the US.

After Conway’s statements went viral, mock vigils and fundraisers were held for the victims of the “massacre”. People sold T-shirts that said “Bowling Green massacre: never forget”. But we did.