Enduring love The Queen and Prince Philip celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. They are not the first public figures to reach this milestone — former US president George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara did so in 2015, while the UNO Center for Public Affairs has calculated that around 40,000 American couples have been married
No. 2 iron English Heritage launched a crowdfunding campaign for repairs to Abraham Darby’s 1779 bridge at Ironbridge, Shropshire. This is often called the first iron bridge in the world but in fact one was built ten years earlier to carry the Great North Road over the River Ure in North Yorks. While Darby’s bridge
Pennies from haven Last week’s huge leak of the ‘Paradise Papers’ has put the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man in the spotlight. But the original tax haven was actually New Jersey, not Jersey. — New Jersey was struggling financially in the 1880s until governor Leon Abbett liberalised the state’s incorporation laws. This persuaded
Lynx on the loose — A Eurasian lynx escaped from a zoo in Wales, pre-empting plans to introduce six of the animals to Kielder Forest in Northumberland. The animal was once native to Britain, becoming extinct around the year 700, earlier than the wolf (possibly 1290) or the brown bear (around year 1000). — However,
Littler Hitlers Cabinet secretary Damian Green appealed to commentators to halt the ‘ridiculous rise of routine comparisons to Hitler’. A small selection of examples in the past week: — Chants of ‘Go home, Nazis’ met a white supremacist rally in Florida, where at least one attendee was in a swastika T-shirt. — Ex-US vice president
Cheat sheets The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education wants universities to catch out more students who buy essays online. How much do cheats pay for this service? — 1,000 words in seven days to 1st standard £103. Also offers 2:1 standard for £74 and 2:2 standard for £57. This website offers a refund if
Bunny beginnings Hugh Hefner, creator of Playboy, died. How did he get the idea for bunny girls? — Hefner said he had been inspired by Bunny’s Tavern, a bar in Urbana, Illinois, named after its owner Bernard ‘Bunny’ Fitzsimmons, who opened it in 1936. — A closer match for Hefner’s clubs was the Gaslight Club
Lost in the post Postcard maker J. Salmon is to close after almost 140 years, because holidaymakers now send phone selfies rather than cards. — What is believed to be the very first postcard was a selfie of sorts. It was a caricature of postal workers that practical joker Theodore Hook sent to himself in
Roll up, roll up Party conferences this year revolve around the familiar settings of Bournemouth, Brighton and Manchester. But one party used to be more adventurous. — For its first conference in 1981 the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) opted to have a rolling conference with meetings in Perth, Bradford and London, with the
Selfie-worth The animal rights charity Peta dropped a case claiming that a macaque which took its own photo was entitled to the royalties, rather than the camera owner (but only after the photographer agreed to donate a quarter of the royalties to animal charities). — The idea of animal property rights was advanced by Australian
More or less a million One in 79 Britons is now a millionaire thanks to property price rises. The word is first recorded in 1821, when £1 million was worth £100 million now. More modern-day values of millionaire: £24 million: 1956, when Cole Porter’s song ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’. featured in the film High
Ethnic ethics Actor Ed Skrein withdrew from a cartoon film after protests that he had the wrong ethnic background to play a Japanese-American. Some famous performances which, on the same principle, could be regarded as unacceptable: — Laurence Olivier blacked up to play the lead role in the 1965 film of Othello. — Andrew Sachs,
Big bong theory Big Ben, otherwise known as the Great Bell, is due to fall silent on Monday for renovations to be carried out on the Palace of Westminster’s Elizabeth Tower, in which it is housed. Why is it called Big Ben? —According to one version, Sir Benjamin Hall, who oversaw the installation of the
Out with a whimper Usain Bolt managed only a bronze in his last appearance in the 100 metres at the World Athletics Championships in London. Final appearances often don’t go to plan: — Don Bradman was bowled for a second-ball duck by Eric Hollies in his last Test at the Oval in 1948. Four runs
But me no butts Boris Johnson, being taught a Maori head-to-head greeting, joked that it might be ‘misinterpreted in a pub in Glasgow’. But did he offend the wrong city? In 2007 the OED appealed for details on the origin of ‘Glasgow kiss’, meaning a headbutt. Then, its earliest known first use was in the
Smash the orange Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said the government’s Brexit plans could ‘fall apart like a chocolate orange’. But the point of a chocolate orange is that it doesn’t fall apart easily at all. Launched by Terry’s of York in 1932, many of its TV adverts have emphasised this theme:
The joy of Sixtus Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and his wife announced the birth of their sixth child, a son called Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher. But is that appropriate? — A sixth child ought to be ‘Sextus’. Five popes were called Sixtus but the name is believed to derive from a Greek word meaning ‘polished’.
Banking up the wrong tree The Magic Money Tree is such a neat concept it is a wonder it has not featured more widely in literature. But there is a book of that title by Anna Rashid, self- published in April 2009 — just after quantitative easing began in Britain. In the story, a little
Sharon and Tracy MP Darren Jones, the new Labour MP for Bristol North West, says he is proud to be the first person called Darren ever to be elected to Parliament. Other MPs whose first names have been subject to snobbish derision from some quarters: Gary Streeter CON Gavin Newlands SNP Gavin Robinson DUP Gavin
A mountain to climb Brexit secretary David Davis gave the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, a copy of Regards vers l’Annapurna by Maurice Herzog and Marcel Ichaq. What can be read into the gift? — The book is about the 1950 French expedition to scale Annapurna 1, a 26,414ft peak in Nepal. Although the expedition was