USA TODAY International Edition
Here are 2017’s most-read stories
Go figure: The storyline of Donald Trump’s first year in office was eclipsed by those of a kiss cam, a diet trend, a dead elk and well, an actual eclipse. In fact, lunar events and Trump’s whirlwind presidency both cracked our list of top-read stories twi
10 No way, Jose: A hurricane spares the U.S.
First came Harvey. The hurricane drowned Texas’ Gulf Coast and killed dozens in August. Irma sawed up Florida’s Gulf Coast the following month, causing a power outage that killed 14 patients at a single nursing home. It makes sense, then, that readers watched Hurricane Jose with interest as it ambled up the Atlantic. The storm eventually faded off the East Coast, just before Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico.
9 He opened fire on thousands of concertgoers. Why?
After bullets rang out that left 58 dead and hundreds injured at a Las Vegas music festival, Americans asked the same questions as always: Who, and why? The first proved easier to answer. It was 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock, a wealthy gambler and retired accountant, who mowed down concertgoers while perched from his hotel room. He killed himself prior to capture, leaving behind 23 weapons and incalculable pain and destruction. No clear motive arose in the days that followed.
8 How low can Trump go? USA TODAY’s Editorial Board asks.
Our Editorial Board skewered thencandidate Donald Trump as “unfit for the presidency“last year in a rare disendorsement that made this list. This year? Trump’s “not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W.
Bush.” The scathing sequel dropped this month in response to a tweet in which Trump chose to “all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore,” the board said.
7 Verizon onlookers clamor over a limitless plan
Verizon joined the unlimited party this year as growing competition forced the No. 1 provider to offer a new plan. Mounting competition forced Verizon to cave in this year as the No.1 wireless provider debuted its own unlimited plan — the last major carrier to do so. The $80 per month offering came after T-Mobile and Sprint gained ground using similar plans to grow their user bases in an age of endless Instagrams, Snapchats and livestreams.
6 Secret no more: Trump’s travel taxes agents
President Trump retreats to Trump properties most weekends, bringing a taxpayer-funded fleet with him (and spending thousands at his own resorts). All travel takes a toll on the Secret Service’s budget, and that’s before you factor in agents protecting Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as they open a golf course in Dubai and Ivanka Trump on her ski vacation to Aspen. By August, more than 1,000 Secret Service agents had hit salary and overtime caps meant to last all year, with hundreds of agents going unpaid.
5 An eclipse and a comet add to space trifecta
A rare triple-header lit up the night sky last February when an eclipse, a full moon and a comet all appeared early one Saturday morning. The eclipse was a “penumbral” one where the moon moved through Earth’s outer shadow — an appetizer for August’s total eclipse. And the comet, called 45P, made its closest approach to earth at “only” 7.4 million miles away.
4 The day all of America looked up
Untold Americans last August stepped outside, slid on cardboard glasses and gazed upward. The total solar eclipse stopped the nation in its tracks, promising sky gazers nationwide a view of the moon’s journey past the sun. The first such eclipse to span the nation in almost 100 years marked a once-in-a-lifetime event, and everyone had the same question: What time is the eclipse where I live?
3 That’s no deer: Teenage girl shoots elk in Missouri
Fourteen-year-old Missouri hunter Abby Wilson fixed her aim on the antlered beast and fired. She called her dad, Donald White, over to examine the felled deer. He found something else: The carcass of an elk, the kind protected in their home state of Missouri. Overhunting helped wipe elk out of the state in the early 1900s, and Missouri conservation experts said the elk was 200 miles from a herd reintroduced there years ago. Though Abby had passed a hunter education course, her dad said she faced bullying online after the errant kill.
2 Is it all over for coconut oil? Yes and no
To the dismay of CrossFit enthusiasts everywhere, the American Heart Association reported in June that coconut oil is really not good for your cardiovascular health. Yes, coconut oil’s chemical components can boost the metabolism, researchers found, but the oil also upped “bad” cholesterol in all of its seven controlled trials. And coconut oil packs more saturated fat than butter, beef fat, palm oil — and that’s a recipe for cardiovascular disease. Keep it in your bathroom though: The oil still makes for a mean skin moisturizer.
1 A kiss cam captures love from every angle
During downtime at this year’s NFL Pro Bowl in Orlando, a camera scans the audience for couples game to share a kiss. When a man and a woman appear on the stadium screen, the man turns instead to kiss a man on his right. The kiss cam features a parade of diverse couples thereafter: A biracial couple, a lesbian couple, two friends of different faiths who hug. A man leans over to kiss his wife in a wheelchair. The resulting PSA from the NFL and Ad Council for the Love Has No Labels campaign went viral.