No. 1: Anthony Weiner
Given recent scandals, Anthony Weiner should have been on high alert — and given his surname, he should’ve known better. Weiner’s sins were preceded by New York Representative Chris Lee’s Craigslist fumble, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love child, and IMF Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sexual assault charges. As far as…
Caught?
Scandal has always dogged men in power. Some cynics might even consider the terms “cheating” and “politician” synonymous. But in 2011, after looking to the Yahoo! Search box for details, some people turned to science to see if hubris was an essential component in a power player’s DNA. Sexual compulsion?…
No. 7: News of the World
A death of a whistleblower. A scandal in Scotland Yard. A tabloid’s collapse. A shaving-cream pie aimed at a media tycoon’s mug. Any one of these would have been the makings of a potboiler, but together they were the story that had been heating up for years and finally exploded…
No. 8: “Kate Plus 8″
Kate Gosselin didn’t start out associated with spray tans, “Dancing With the Stars,” and rumored affairs with Australian bodyguards. But that’s how she ended. The world would likely never have known a thing about the 36-year-old suburban Pennsylvania mom had she not given birth to twins and sextuplets and then…
No. 9: Elizabeth Warren
Before 2011, few people had heard of Elizabeth Warren. Those who had included Time magazine, which named her one of the new “sheriffs” in town to clean up Washington and Wall Street, and Yahoo! Year in Review 2010, which saw her buzz rise in a burgeoning financial uprising. That name,…
No. 10: Iraq Withdrawal
The United States has more than 100 Status of Forces Agreements or, in an unlikely acronym, SOFAs. A congressional report states that SOFAs “generally establish the framework under which U.S. military personnel operate in a foreign country, addressing how the domestic laws of the foreign jurisdiction shall be applied toward…
No. 5: Silvio Berlusconi
This was a tough year for Silvio Berlusconi. Plagued by scandals and harshly criticized for his handling of Italy’s mounting debt crisis, the prime minister was finally forced to step down in November. Now that he could no longer push for immunity based on his PM duties, the embattled former…
No. 6: Steve Jobs
Before Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple on August 24, he had seen unprecedented sales for the “magical and revolutionary” iPad 2. Two days after he resigned, Apple became, briefly, the world’s most valuable company. The iPhone 4S, announced on October 4, the day before Jobs died, broke…
No. 5: Friendster
Before MySpace hit the scene, and back when everybody was still talking about Napster, there was Friendster. One of the first social networking sites, Friendster exited that realm in May 2011 to become a social entertainment site, intended to complement Facebook — the very social network that was blamed for…
No. 4: Harry Potter
After 10 years, the Harry Potter series came to its cinematic end this July. The No. 1 film searched for on Yahoo! in 2011, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II,” earned enough money to fill a new vault or two at Gringott’s. Overall, the film raked in $381…