Barometer
Barometer
Waiting for the gong Tony Blair was knighted, 14 years after leaving Downing Street. How long have other ex-PMs had…
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Centenaries 2022 will see the 100th anniversary of: the BBC; Reader’s Digest; Ulysses by James Joyce; insulin treatment for diabetes;…
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Thirsty work Sixty-one pub-goers on a night out in the Tan Hill Inn, 1,500 feet up in the Pennines in…
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Red Peppa? In a rambling speech to the CBI, Boris Johnson praised Peppa Pig. Has she changed political sides? Peppa…
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Shell out Royal Dutch Shell announced that it is to move its HQ to London and become a fully British…
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Horror shows Eight people were killed when fans of rapper Travis Scott rushed the stage at a concert in Houston,…
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Another minute Addressing COP26 in Glasgow, the Prime Minister claimed it was ‘one minute to midnight’ in the fight against…
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Filming fatalities The actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a cinematographer on set when mistakenly given a gun loaded with real…
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Drinks at the palace The Queen was reported to have given up regular drinking. What do we know about her…
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Wrong place, wrong time The name of the village of Nelson, north of Cardiff, was described as ‘problematic’ in an…
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Whole-life sentences How many prisoners are serving whole-life sentences? — There are currently 74 prisoners in prison with whole-life tariffs;…
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Scummy idea Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner called Tories ‘scum’ in a speech to activists at her party’s conference. The…
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Seeds of change The Chelsea Flower Show opened in autumn for the first time, delayed thanks to the pandemic. The…
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Floating vote Voters in St Petersburg were presented with three candidates all calling themselves Boris Vishnevsky, with two believed to…
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Escape velocity The evacuation of Afghanistan was likened to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. What were the…
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Birth of the Paralympics While Athens can claim to be the home city of the Olympic Games, the Paralympics can…
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Student takeover Where did the Taliban come from? — The word ‘Taliban’ means simply ‘students’ in Pashtun. They were originally…
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Woolly thinking There were protests in Whitehall to save Geronimo, an alpaca due to be put down after testing positive…
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Happy valet Police Scotland dropped what they said was a randomly generated codeword — ‘Bunter’ — for the security operation…
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Reinventing the wheels Skateboarding made its debut at the Olympics. Who invented the skateboard? — There are many reports of…
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Waiting Games What did Japan, and the world, look like the last time Tokyo held the Olympics in 1964? —…
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Space cadets Richard Branson joined a test flight on his Virgin Galactic craft to the edge of space, to promote…
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Mask crusader Who first wore a medical face mask? — The beaked outfits worn by plague doctors aside, the first…
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Isolated cases Large numbers of people are still being ordered to self-isolate in spite of having been vaccinated — 137,560…
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Royal waves Does any other country have a royal yacht? — The Queen of Denmark uses HDMY Dannebrog, a 260ft…
