The comedian David Walliams performed the impressive feat of swimming 140 miles of the River Thames from Lechlade to Westminster. That is still a long way short of the swims undertaken by Martin Strel, a 56-year-old Slovenian. — After swimming the length of the Danube (1,866 miles), the Mississippi (2,360 miles) and the Yangtze (2,487
A judge has described squatting as ‘good for society’ and called for lists of empty homes to be made available to an agency for squatters, while the Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, is attempting to strengthen the law against squatting. How do laws on the subject vary across Europe? Britain Breaking and entering is a criminal
The taxes of sin Bonn has introduced a flat-rate tax of €6 a night for prostitutes working in the city, payable at a ticket machine. Attempts to tax prostitution have been made since at least Roman times: a receipt from Roman Egypt suggested that a male prostitute paid four drachmas in tax for a two-month period.
A Red Arrows pilot was killed when his plane crashed, the first fatality in the RAF’s aeronautical troupe since 1988. — Aeronautics were once more hazardous. They were pioneered by a San Franciscan, Lincoln Beachey. In 1910 he took flying lessons, crashing on his first and second flights. He went on, in 1911, to entertain
Bishops and rioters From the Scarman report to ‘Faith in the City’, no British riot is complete without politicians and churchmen weighing in with the answers. It was no different in the 13th century. In 1272 the townsmen of Norwich rioted after the prior to the city’s monastery refused to allow the arrest of monastic
Select company The appearance of Rupert Murdoch before the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee confirmed that some of the best action in parliament is now before select committees, not in the chamber. — Select committees were around in the 18th century, when they were convened for particular purposes. An early one, in
Achieving closure The News of the World has shut after 168 years, joining a long list of defunct British newspapers. Here are some of the more notable ones: Daily Herald Started in 1911 as a strike news sheet by the London Society of Compositors. Taken over by the TUC in 1922, in the 1930s it
Victory celebrations Novak Djokovic celebrated winning the men’s singles at Wimbledon by eating grass on the Centre Court. While not doing a lot to boost the image of his native Serbia as a modern country, the act joins a litany of bizarre victory celebrations. — After winning a 100 metres race in 2004, Maurice Greene
Life of Pi A group of mathematicians is campaigning for the mathematical constant pi to be replaced by tau, the latter being the ratio of the circumference to the radius as opposed to that of the circumference to the diameter. As tau is simply twice the value of pi (approximately 6.28) it won’t consume so
Phreaks and geeks Police arrested a 19-year-old man suspected of hacking into the government computers containing data from the entire 2011 census. — Hacking evolved in the 1960s from phone ‘phreaking’, manipulating telecom systems to gain free calls. In 1972, one John T. Draper succeeded in accessing US telecoms systems by transmitting a 2600 hertz
Council housing Ed Miliband proposed that a Labour government under his leadership would send people in employment to the top of the council house waiting list. Mr Miliband risks criticism by his own party, which has already attacked similar plans by the Tory-controlled Westminster Council. How would Mr Miliband’s policy have gone down with the
Suicide country The BBC is to broadcast a documentary featuring a man committing suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich. Where else in the world can assisted suicide be carried out without attracting a murder charge? Netherlands: prosecutions for voluntary euthanasia effectively ceased in 1973, after an agreement between doctors and the government. Formally legalised
This wek’s Barometer Crime lords — Lord Taylor of Warwick was jailed for 12 months for fiddling his expenses. He is the fourth peer of the realm to be jailed, after Lord Archer (jailed for four years in 2001 for perjury), Lord Watson of Invergowrie (16 months in 2005 for setting light to hotel curtains
Irish quarter Is there any such thing as a US president without Irish roots? The US genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts has researched the origins of all US presidents and concluded that 20 of the 44 US presidents had some Irish family connections. Half of these, however, have been within the past 50 years. — Until
Royal reception — The first visit to Ireland by a British monarch in 100 years has focused attention on the last, by George V on his coronation tour in July 1911. He remarked on the warmth of his reception, even though this was just five years before the Easter Rising. — One visit that went
A better class of tourist — The Seychelles tourism industry received a boost with the announcement that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are to spend their honeymoon there. — Like many island states in the tropics, tourism is a huge part of the economy: just over half the country’s GDP and 70 per cent
Rules of engagement The strike on bin Laden has been widely celebrated in the US, even though there are strong grounds to regard it as illegal. — Section 5(g) of Executive Order 11905 signed by Gerald Ford in 1976 states ‘No employee of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in
Easter day The late date of Easter this year has rekindled one of Britain’s lengthiest political debates: the implementation, or rather non-implementation, of the Easter Act 1928. The act was to fix the date of Easter on the Sunday following the second Saturday in April — meaning that it would wander between 9 and 15
Prince of cars It was revealed that Audi has been enticing royal customers with 60 per cent discounts. It is not the first car company to target royalty to build its image. — In 1898 the Daimler Motor Company of Coventry offered the Prince of Wales the use of five cars on a visit to
Intern affairs — Nick Clegg called for internships to be made available to students from poor backgrounds, although it was then revealed that the young Clegg was himself parachuted into an internship at a bank thanks to a phone call from his dad. — The word ‘internship’ first entered public consciousness in Britain after the