Made to measure
The government started reviewing whether we should stay two metres apart while social distancing or whether one metre would do. What is a metre?
— Since 1960 it has been defined as the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second.
— But it was originally defined by the post-revolution French government as one ten-millionth of the distance between the Equator and the North Pole, on a meridian through Paris.
— The signing of the Metre Convention on 20 May 1875 by representatives of 17 nations officially established the metre as an international unit of measurement.
— If everyone in Britain joined the queue for Primark it would go 1.6 times round the Earth with social distancing at one metre, and 3.2 times round the Earth with social distancing at two metres.
Monumental figures
Some statues of black people in Britain:
— Nelson Mandela, Parliament Square (also on South Bank and outside Brixton recreation centre).
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