Ah, dear readers, you were quick and opinionated in telling me the stories you believed most impacted Utahns in 2007.
One reader wrote: “You should add this one – “Big business completes hostile takeover of U.S. government, elected officials mere figureheads.”
Others sent similarly sly comments with their numbered choices:
“Instead of the stories you listed, you should have included these. ‘U.S. fails to renounce torture’; ‘U.S. government collapses, President not informed’; ‘Outing U.S. covert CIA agents no longer treason’; ‘U.S. news agencies AWOL, unlikely to return’; ‘U.S. Constitution gone missing’; ‘Global warming has arrived’ or ‘Sanity to return to Washington on Jan. 20, 2008.’ ”
Enough of the levity. Here are your choices for the top stories in Utah in the last year:
1. Six miners and three rescuers died in two cave-ins at Crandall Canyon mine near Huntington. This story got 212 votes.
2. Sulejman Talovic, an 18-year-old Bosnian immigrant, killed five people and wounded four at Trolley Square. He died in a shoot-out with police. 197 votes.
3. Universal school voucher program is defeated by Utah voters. 188 votes.
4. A 700-ton bomb blast in the Nevada desert was postponed indefinitely. 185 votes.
5. Vice President Dick Cheney’s commencement speech at BYU prompts protests. 182 votes.
6. University of Utah professor Mario R. Capecchi wins Nobel Prize in medicine. 172 votes.
7. Wildfires blazed through Beaver and Millard counties and blackened hundreds of square miles in Utah, including the largest fire in state history. 152 votes.
8. To escape, Curtis Allgier shoots his guard at the University of Utah Medical Center and is captured at Arby’s. 144 votes.
9. Eleven-year-old Sam Ives is killed by a black bear near American Fork. 41 votes.
10. Inmates who escape, including convicted killers from Daggett County jail, prompt the state to move first-degree and violent felons back into state custody. 120 votes.
11. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign shines national spotlight on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 92 votes.
12. Polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs is convicted of two counts of rape by an accomplice and sentenced to terms of five years to life. 87 votes.
The following stories got fewer than 20 votes each:
* Mormon Tabernacle reopens.
* Real Salt Lake soccer stadium: A back-and-forth soap opera to get stadium built.
* Procter & Gamble says it will build paper-products factory in Box Elder County.
* Camille Cleverley, a 22-year-old BYU student, suffered a fatal fall in Provo Canyon.
* Remains of a man accused of killing a Colorado police officer in 1988 found in southeastern Utah.
* Utah Jazz make the Western Conference finals.
* Utah basketball coaching changes: University of Utah hires Jim Boylen and Southern Utah University hires Roger Reid.
* Rulon Gardner and two Utah men rescued after surviving a small-plane crash near Good Hope Bay in Lake Powell.
* Parents accused of kidnapping bride-to-be Julianna Myers on the eve of her wedding plead guilty to custodial interference.
* James Faust, a top official in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dies at 87.
* The fight between MediaNews Group Inc. and the McCarthey family over The Salt Lake Tribune ends.
* The start date of the Utah Legislature’s annual general session is changed to avoid conflict with Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Feeling Testy: If you believe you have paid attention to what has been in the news in 2007, take a break and go to our Web site, www.sltrib.com, click on the Trivia Test icon at the top of the page and prepare to be humbled.
It’s fun and revealing – and it takes only a few minutes.
