The people have spoken and the iron token from the Hasbro board game Monopoly will be retired for good, being replaced by a cat. In a vote on the Monopoly Facebook page, people from 120 countries voiced their opinion, voting to keep the Scottie dog, shoe, wheelbarrow, race car, thimble, top hat and battle ship, and to get rid of the iron. The tokens proposed to replace the ousted token included a guitar, a helicopter, a diamond ring and a toy robot, but the cat was the clear winner, garnering 31% of the votes.

By now just about everyone has heard the story of the “Bush shoe thrower” – the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush, and called him a “dog”, while Bush was talking at a press conference in Baghdad. Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw both his shoes and the epithet at Bush before denouncing him as having brought death and sorrow to Iraq as a result of six years of war. What is amazing about this story – among other things – is how quickly that incident made it around the world. And that is because of the Internet.