In 1965, men in the north of England were 16 per cent more likely to die before reaching 75 than southerners. By 2008 it was 20 per cent. The Economist, 15th September
Heroin was originally a brand name for Bayer’s cough syrup. Fox News, 9th April
Self-driving cars may account for up to 75 per cent of vehicles on the road by the year 2040. Wired, 19th September
Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the Chinese republic, was educated at the same Hawaii high school as Barack Obama. Financial Times, 9th November
The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary named “omnishambles” as word of the year, summing up the events of 2012. Coined by the writers of the satirical show The Thick of It, it means a “situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged.” The Times, 13th November
When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, Picasso was a prime suspect. History Today, August 2011
The number of Jedi knights in the UK has halved since the last census but, at 176,632, it has more than triple the members of Paganism, the next largest “alternative religion.” The Guardian, 11th December
The staff carried by the next Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has a rock badger carved on it because he once burst out laughing while reading a biblical passage about the animal aloud in church. The Telegraph, 8th November
In fact
Self-driving cars and rock badgers
January 23, 2013
