The 32 Best Superlatives Of 2012

2012 was a year of great highs (and lows).

1. Most Weed Smoked

Snoop Lion

In 2012, Snoop Lion literally smoked his weight in weed. Here’s how we figured this out:

According to his own account, Snoop consistently smokes 81 blunts a day. Over the entire course of 2012, this comes out to approximately 29,000 blunts. Using the modest estimate of 3 grams of weed per blunt, this amounts to 191.8 pounds of weed. Strangely, that’s exactly the same as Snoop’s weight. It’s physically impossible that anyone else smoked more.

Source: i.huffpost.com

2. Most Money Made

Which individuals made the most money in 2012? We looked at the year’s top earners across a few different categories. Here’s how they stacked up:

Celebrity: Oprah

Oprah’s been holding down this top spot for years. She’s making $5 every second, enough money to buy a MINI Cooper every 68 minutes.

Via: gettyimages.com

CEO: John Hammergren

John Hammergren, CEO and chairman of McKesson (pharmaceuticals) pulled in this astounding salary in 2012. It’s greater than the endowment of his alma mater, Xavier ($117.4M).

Source: gettyimages.com

Musician: Dr. Dre

Dr. Dre’s 9-figure earnings make him the 5th highest paid celeb of 2012.

Source: gettyimages.com

Athlete: Floyd Mayweather

Floyd “Money” Mayweather pulled in $30,000 every second he spent in the ring. Gambling lost him $3M on a single college football game, but he cut expenses with a 60-day visit to the Clark County Detention Center.

Source: gophoto.it

Politician: Lee Hsien Long

The Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Long gets quite the paycheck. In 2012, he made over 4 times more money than President Obama.

Source: gettyimages.com

8. Largest Loss of Net Worth

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg did marry Priscilla Chan so this year wasn’t all bad…never mind, that’s actually a lot of zeros. His losses were greater than the GDP of two-thirds of the world’s nations.

Source: gettyimages.com

9. Fastest growing city

Yamoussoukro

Yamoussoukro, the capital city of Côte d’Ivoire, had only 885,000 people in 2010. That’s expected to rise to 1.3 million by 2015. So this city you’ve never heard of will be as big as Austin, TX in 2 more years.

Source: paris21.org

10. Largest Gathering

Arba’een

Visiting the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala, Iraq during Arba’een on 01/14/12: That’s a whole lot of people in one place. They could have filled every NFL stadium in the US 5 times!

Source: dc358.4shared.com

11. Most Stolen Item

Bicycles

Bicycles beat out power tools, gold jewelry, laptops and cell phones for the top spot. Time to get a serious chain.

Source: pristinefixedgear.com

12. Most Sunny Days

Yuma, Arizona

Here, the sun shines 350 days per year on average. In 2012, however, Yuma had 359 days of sun. That means that 96% of days were sunny there. Jump on that 3:10 train and get tan!

Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com

13. Best-Selling Book

Fifty Shades of Grey

With over 65 million copies sold, E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey is the best-selling book of 2012.

Image by Neil Hall / Reuters

14. Best-Selling Album

21

Adele’s 21 topped the charts for the second year in a row.

Image by Mark J. Terrill, File / AP

15. Best-Selling Single

“Somebody That I Used to Know”

“Somebody That I Used to Know”, by Belgian-Australian singer-songwriter Gotye, has sold over 6.7 million copies so far this year, giving it a slight edge over “Call Me Maybe” at 6.2 million. With the addition of the year-end charts, Gotye’s hit is expected to surpass 7 million sales in 2012.

Including 2011, the song has sold over 10 million copies, making it the 12th best selling digital single of all time. This is more than 5x greater than the number of digital sales of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”.

Image by Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images

16. Most Musical Guest Appearances

2 Chainz

Easily the most ubiquitous rapper this year, 2 Chainz had an epic run of guest verses unseen since 2007-era Lil’ Wayne, who considered changing his name to “Featuring Lil’ Wayne”.

Image by Isaac Brekken / Getty Images

17. Highest Grossing Movie

The Avengers

Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, and others collaborated in The Avengers. The $1.6 billion gross is more than that of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor combined.

Source: 5jmedia.com

18. Most Watched TV Event

Games of the XXX Olympiad

219.4 million Americans tuned in for a record breaking TV audience. 302 events, 204 nations, 26 sports, and Michael Phelps’ 22nd Olympic-record breaking medal made this must-watch TV this past summer.

Source: mcfaddenski.files.wordpress.com

19. Most Watched TV Series

Sunday Night Football

Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth and Michele Tafoya step into the limelight in dethroning American Idol’s 7 year stretch at the top. SNF engrossed an average of 20.7M viewers each Sunday night, an astounding 20% share of the entire television audience.

Source: p.twimg.com

20. Most Airtime for TV Show

SportsCenter

There are only 8,784 hours in the year, so SportsCenter’s 12,740 hours of airtime in as many episodes means that the show is on TV three times every two hours. To put that in perspective: Friends (1,400 hrs), Family Guy (1,100 hrs), Big Bang Theory (900 hrs), Seinfeld (600 hrs), and Two And A Half Men (400 hrs) combined for only 4,400 hours this past year, about third of SportsCenter’s total airtime.

Source: img207.imageshack.us

21. Most Visited Website

Google

People went to Google nearly a quarter trillion times in 2012. That means there are 7,600 visits every second. The average user visits the site 20 times a month.

Image by Mark Blinch / Reuters

22. Top Search Term

“facebook”

“facebook” tops this year’s list of most searched terms on the internet. According to Google AdWords, it was searched an astounding 45 billion times, or 1,500 times per second.

Source: obstacol.com

23. Most Facebook Likes

Rihanna

It’s obvious now that people like Rihanna. Her song “Diamond” was her 12th career #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, tying her with Madonna and The Supremes for most number 1 songs in the chart’s history.

Source: entertainmentrundown.com

24. Most Twitter Followers

Lady Gaga

She’s still number 1. Maybe now she’ll tell us what’s in the world’s most exclusive website.

Image by Luca Bruno / AP

25. Most Popular YouTube Video

Gangnam Style

Gangnam Style was viewed over a billion times on since it was launched in July. The craze spread everywhere, even college sports.

26. Top Scoring Reddit Post

“The Bus Knight”

Coming in with 1,713 points more than the #2, Robert_Houdin inspires public transportation users everywhere.

Source: i.imgur.com

27. Most Expensive Keyword

“mesothelioma attorney baltimore”

Yes, they may pay a few hundred dollars every time you click, but it pays off. These lawyers take in roughly a third of the multi-million dollar compensation from each case of asbestos related cancer.

Source: usrecallnews.com

28. Most Popular GIF

Michelle Jenneke Warming Up

Before this year, it would have been unheard of to say your favorite dance was by a Australian hurdler. No longer. On BuzzFeed and its partner sites, Michelle Jenneke GIFs were viewed 10 million times. Her pre-race routines took off on Youtube as well, with this video getting over 20 million views.

Source: s3-ec.buzzfed.com

29. Most Viewed BuzzFeed Post

“21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity”

Jack Shepherd’s “21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity” struck a chord with our readers, spreading rapidly on Facebook and other social networks. Its 11.3 million views place it well ahead of 2011’s top post, “The 45 Most Powerful Photos of 2011”, which received 9 million views during that year.

30. Most Viewed BuzzFeed Partner Post

“Prince Harry — Naked Pictures of Las Vegas Rager Leaked”

BuzzFeed tracks activity on hundreds of partner publisher sites. In 2012, the biggest post of them all was TMZ’s account of Prince Harry’s wild night. Her majesty clearly taught her boys how to have fun. Strip pool enthusiasts rejoice, you’re in the big leagues now.

Source: ll-media.tmz.com

31. Most Popular Animal

Birds

Since 1995, we’ve watched birds outsmart tenacious felines. Tweety keeps it up through 2012: him and his feathery friends are 2.5x more popular than their furry predators.

Here’s how the top animals stacked up on Google Trends:

33. Most Improved Animal

Sloth

While dogs, cats, and birds are always most popular, sloths saw the largest jump in popularity throughout the year. Using Google Trends, we were able to see increases in sloth searches throughout the past 2 years:

Sloths got the edge overall, but the story was different on BuzzFeed. Here, 2012 was the year of the hedgehog. There were over 1.1 million views to hedgehog-related content.

35. Most Popular Dog

Corgi

On BuzzFeed and our partner sites, Corgi-related content was viewed over 10 million times.

Source: s3-ec.buzzfed.com