On the warpath
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted coup saw his mercenary army, Wagner, advance three-quarters of the 596 miles from Rostov to Moscow. How far did other coup leaders have to travel?
Distance in miles
49 BC, Julius Caesar: Rubicon river to Rome 152
1799, Napoleon: Paris to Saint-Cloud 7
1815, Napoleon: Elba to Paris 564
1922, Mussolini: Naples to Rome 117
1936, Franco: Gran Canaria to Seville 851
1973, Pinochet: Valparaiso to Santiago 63
Commencing the Tour
The 120th-anniversary Tour de France departs Bilbao on Saturday when 176 riders will compete for the yellow jersey. It’s the second time the race has started in Spain, having set off from San Sebastián in 1992. Outside of France it has most commonly started in the Netherlands (6 starts), Belgium (5), Germany (4) and has twice started in the UK and Luxembourg. Next year’s Grand Départ will be from Florence: the first time the Tour has started in Italy.
– Not all of the riders will finish the Tour. In 1919, out of 69 starters just 10 made the finish line in Paris. That was also the slowest race, with the winner clocking up an average speed of 18 miles per hour. Last year’s winner rode at over 26 miles per hour on average.
Channel change
Rishi Sunak has had some success at ‘stopping the boats’, with crossings by Albanians reducing by 99 per cent. The largest groups crossing the Channel are now Afghans and Indians. But how many people have crossed so far this year compared with the same period in previous years?
2023 11,279
2022 12,173
2021 5,917
2020 2,493
2019 592
Source: Home Office
Price drops
Inflation remains stubbornly high, having not moved from its current 8.7 per cent. But not everything is getting more expensive. Largest falls in the consumer price inflation ‘basket’ in the year to May:
Motorcycles -0.7%
Glassware -1%
Parking spaces -1.2%
Travel goods -1.9%
CDs -2.9%
Computers -3.9%
Petrol -13%
Diesel -14%
Source: ONS
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