Barometer | 31 December 2011

100 candles

Some of those who are due to be celebrating hundredth birthdays in 2012:
3 February Mary Carlisle, US actress who starred alongside Bing Crosby in Doctor Rhythm
8 April Alois Brunner, assistant to Adolf Eichmann, never brought to justice and still believed to be living under the name Dr Georg Fischer in Damascus
28 April Kaneto Shindo, Japanese film director best known for making films about the bombing of his home city, Hiroshima
4 July Said Akl, Lebanese poet and nationalist
1 October Kathleen Ollerenshaw, mathematician who overcame deafness to become head of mathematics at Manchester University and education adviser to Mrs Thatcher
17 December Ted Short, former education secretary and deputy leader of the Labour party

Titanic connection

1912 has a strong association with the sinking of the Titanic, the 100th anniversary of which falls on the night of 14/15 April. What would the lost passengers have found going on in the America of 1912 had they arrived?
—New Mexico and Arizona had just become respectively the 47th and 48th states of the US.
—Americans were able to drive their Chevy to the levee for the first time — car manufacturer Chevrolet had just been launched with the Series C Classic Six
—A pencil sharpener salesman from Chicago, Edgar Rice Burroughs, was about to publish his first novel, Tarzan of the  Apes
—The Girl Scouts was formed when Juliette ‘Daisy’ Gordon put together an 18-strong troupe in Savannah, Georgia
—The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad had just opened

Power failures

Whatever 2012 holds we can be confident of one thing: it will be another year of promise at Battersea Power Station but nothing will happen. These are a few things which have so far failed to happen since it was decommissioned as a power station in 1983.
1986 indoor theme park based on Britain’s industrial past
1990 Office, shops and hotel
1997 Shopping mall with 180 shops, 50 restaurants and nightclubs
2000 A 2,000-seat circus, two hotels and a cinema
2006 Shops, biomass power station, public park, energy museum and station on Northern Line extension