Rochester’s special qualities, and the price of Ebola.com

What’s special about Rochester

What is special about Rochester and Strood? — Rochester has the second oldest cathedral and school in Britain, after Canterbury. — Medway, the unitary authority area in which the constituency is situated, has one of the highest rates of private home-ownership in Britain, with 92 per cent of homes in private hands. — Rochester has one of the few remaining airports in Britain with only grass runways – though it has filed a planning application to build a paved runway. — Morrisons in Strood was Gordon Brown’s first engagement after announcing the date of the 2010 general election. — Strood was once the largest producer of steam rollers in Britain.

The deadliest battles

British involvement in the Afghan war came to an end after 13 years and the loss of 453 servicemen. How does that compare with other post-second world war conflicts?

	British military deaths
Korean war, 1950-53	1,139
Falklands war, 1982	258
Iraq war, 2003-09	179
Aden emergency, 1963-67	90
Yugoslav civil war, 1991-1999	72
Gulf war, 1991	47

The cost of a domain

The domain name ebola.com was bought for $200,000 by an organisation called the Weed Growth Fund, which believes cannabis will turn out to be a treatment for the disease. How much for a domain name?

Insurance.com (2010)	$35.6m
Sex.com (2010)	$14m
Hotels.com (2001)	$11m
Porn.com (2007)	$9.5m
Whisky.com (2014)	$3.1m
Drugs.com (1999)	$824,000

Faster and faster

David Cameron backed a plan for an HS3 from Liverpool to Hull. How the speed or trains in regular service has increased:

1933 Hamburg-Berlin	100mph
1938 Bologna-Naples	125mph
1964 Tokyo-Osaka	130mph
1981 Paris-Lyon	168mph
1989 Paris-Le Mans	188mph
2004 Shanghai-Airport	268mph