In with the new How the new year is being celebrated around the world. From 1 January… BRITAIN: Annual Investment Allowance for businesses cut from £500,000 to £200,000. Deposit Guarantee Limit for savers — the sum which the government will refund to savers after a bank collapse — is cut from £85,000 to £75,000. Drink
Christmas birthday Next year has a claim to be the 400th birthday of Father Christmas. Ben Jonson wrote a short play for James I, called Christmas: his masque, performed at court in December 1616. The central character, named as ‘Old Christmas’ and ‘Captaine Christmas’, encouraged everyone to merriment. He had ten children, with names ranging
The first warmist The first attempt to quantify the link between CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures was attributed to Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, in a paper in the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science in 1896. He was working on a theory to explain the oscillation between ice ages and interglacial periods. He
Amen corner Digital Cinema Media, a company which distributes adverts to cinemas, refused to allow an advert which involves the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer by, among others, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Some other battles over the prayer: — Campaigners want Alberta to follow other Canadian states, where recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in state
Friendly words England football fans sang ‘La Marseillaise’ in a friendly match at Wembley. The anthem has not always been so popular. In 1992 a Committee for a Marseillaise of Fraternity was founded to campaign for a change to the words, written as a war hymn by an army captain while French troops were besieged
A marathon of cheats Russian athletes may be stripped of the medals they won at the 2012 Olympics, but what of the earliest-known drug-taker in the modern Olympics? Thomas Hicks won the 1904 marathon in St Louis after taking two doses of brandy laced with strychnine. —Hicks collapsed on the finishing line and had to
Family business Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Trudeau, was elected to his father’s old job as Prime Minister of Canada. Other descendants of former leaders currently in power: — The maternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, held the same job between 1957 and 1960. — Park Geun-hye, president of South Korea, is
Killer facts The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens. A few of the other things which have been claimed to be linked to cancer in the past fortnight: — Make-up in Halloween outfits (blamed by a laser surgery centre in New York) — Chocolate (blamed by a colorectal surgeon
Bigger Bens Big Ben will have a £29m refurbishment. Who has the biggest clock tower? Kremlin Clock: Installed on the 232ft Spasskaya Tower. Clock has a diameter of 20ft. Big Ben: Installed on 315ft Elizabeth Tower. Clock faces are 24ft across. Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, New York: 700ft high (although the clock is only two-thirds
Bang goes the plan The demolition of six tower blocks in Glasgow failed when the top half of two of the blocks settled upright on rubble. Some more demolitions which went wrong: — A girl of 12 was killed and several people injured in 1997 when the Royal Canberra Hospital toppled rather than collapsed in
The death of Diesel The Volkswagen scandal has brought into question the future of the diesel engine. A century ago its inventor, Rudolf Diesel, was himself the subject of scandal. On 29 September 1913 he disappeared from the steamship Dresden on its way from Antwerp to Harwich. He had retired to his cabin after dinner
Water worlds Nasa announced it had found evidence of running water on Mars in the form of dark streaks on mountains and cliff edges. On which other planets and celestial bodies can you slake your thirst? — Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, is believed to have an ocean of liquid water 60 miles deep, beneath
Available for parties Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said that leaving his party to join the Liberal Democrats would be like ‘leaving the Beatles to join a Bananarama tribute band’. Is there such a thing? Bananaruma is a Leicester-based band led by the head of arts at a local secondary school. They advertise an hour-long
It’s their party Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership contest with 60% of the vote among four candidates in the first round. Which leader has the largest mandate from their party? — David Cameron was elected in 2005 with 28% of the vote out of four candidates in the first round (held among MPs only).
Old bags The government announced details of a compulsory 5p charge for single-use plastic bags in shops. Plastic bags have only been around since 1960, when they were first produced by the Swedish firm Akerlund and Rausing, later to give the world the Tetrapak. The first store to use them was Strom, a shoe-shop chain
Peers’ peers Forty-five new peers were created. Are we alone in having an upper house of parliament made up of appointed cronies? FRANCE Senate has 348 members elected for six-year terms by 150,000 state officials known as ‘grandes electeurs’. GERMANY Bundesrat is made up of 69 members delegated by governments of individual states. ITALY Senate composed
How many cheats? More data on members of extramarital dating site Ashley Madison were put online. How widespread is adultery? — The 2000 National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles found 15% of men and 9% of women admitted an ‘overlapping relationship’ within the previous 12 months. — In 2010 an opinion poll for a
No sex, please Several friends of the late Sir Edward Heath asserted that he could not be guilty of sexually assaulting children because he was asexual. How many adults do not experience sexual attraction? — A 2004 study by Anthony F. Bogaert, of Brock University, Ontario, Canada, analysed responses to a British questionnaire ten years
Caught working The government announced a crackdown on illegal workers. How many illegal workers are caught in Britain? — From October to December last year, 716 illegal workers were caught, 337 in London and the south-east. Among those caught were restaurant workers in Chinatown, a takeaway worker in Norwich, a fish-and-chip shop worker in Lincoln
Rogue traders Former UBS trader Tom Hayes was jailed for 14 years for rigging the Libor market. How long could you go down for financial misconduct? 19 months (plus a £100,000 fine) in the case of Julian Rifat, former trader at Moore Capital, convicted of insider trading in March this year. 7 years in the