Tweets that left their mark in 2017

2017 has been quite a year for news – and Twitter was no exception. With millions and millions of tweets, we narrowed down a handful of the most memorable, impactful and strangest tweets of the lot.

1. #MeToo goes viral

One of the most important stories of the year were the revelations that emerged of allegations of rape and sexual harassment by Hollywood film-maker Harvey Weinstein. Twitter was stormed by #MeToo stories of women sharing their experiences of sexual harassment. The allegations extended to politicians, celebrities and big names in Hollywood.

2. Covfefe

US President Donald Trump's most mysterious tweet to date, also known as "covfefe," takes second place. It's still not clear what he meant or whether it was simply a typo but it accumulated countless retweets and likes, quickly becoming a viral meme. The tweet was deleted five hours later. Trump followed it up with another one, challenging people to figure out its meaning. Public gaffe or nice save? You decide.

3. Ariana Grande: 'Broken.'

American pop singer Ariana Grande sent this tweet out, right after the Manchester bombing where 23 people were killed, including the attacker. It occurred as thousands were leaving Grande's concert at Manchester Arena. The tweet became one of the most retweeted and liked tweets of 2017.

4. #TakeAKnee

In September 2017, #TakeAKnee generated a whopping 1.2 million tweets in only three days. NFL player Colin Kaepernick started the movement in August 2016 in protest over racial injustice. Many NFL players, prior to the start of matches, kneeled in protest during the national anthem. President Trump lashed out at the players involved and called for them to be fired or suspended.

5. We'll change human rights laws, if necessary

After the Manchester and London attacks that saw dozens of people killed, UK Prime Minister Theresa May pledged to change human rights laws "if [they] get in the way of tackling extremism and terrorism". It came as she was seeking re-election in snap elections. It prompted sharp reactions from the Labour and Liberal Democrat opposition parties.

6. #LoveArmyForRohingya

French Snapchat star Jerome Jarre started the hashtag campaign, initially along with "#ErdoganHelpRohingya" to draw attention to the Rohingya's plight in Myanmar. It did not go unnoticed by Turkey's President Erdogan, who replied, promising help through Turkish aid agencies. So the #LoveArmyForRohingya was born.

7. Obama quotes Mandela

This tweet from former US President Barack Obama became one of the most retweeted tweets of 2017. Obama's tweet featured an image of kids of different ethnicities and quoted the late Nelson Mandela. The tweet was presumably in response to the far-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia where a white supremacist drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters and killed one person.

8. Bana Alabed becomes a Turkish citizen

Bana Alabed, Syria's tweeting girl, and her family were transferred to Turkey where they became Turkish citizens in May. The seven-year-old caught the world's attention after reporting about her experiences from Aleppo city, before it fell to forces loyal to Syrian regime.

9. Ask for chicken nuggets, smash the retweet record

If you like chicken nuggets, you'll enjoy this. Sixteen-year-old Carter Wilkerson's tweet, asking for 18 million retweets in order to get a year's worth of free chicken nuggets, certainly fell short of its goal but managed to get more than 3.6 million retweets – becoming the tweet with the most number of retweets. It beat American talk show host Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar selfie, which accumulated over 3.4 million retweets. For the record, Wilkerson managed to get a year's worth of free chicken nuggets from Wendy's.

10. Trump's non-insult insult to Kim Jong-un

In another bizarre but memorable tweet, US President Trump apparently took offence at some words attributed to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and decided to return the favour in a not-so-subtle way. We'll just leave this here.

11. Netanyahu's support for Trump's wall

Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported Trump's controversial plan to build a border wall along the Mexican border, likening it to the wall Israel built along the Green Line. Palestinians call it the "apartheid wall." In 2004, the International Court of Justice deemed the wall illegal and ordered Israel to tear it down. However it remains.