War horses
Steven Spielberg’s film War Horse was released this week. How many horses were killed in British Army service during the first world war?
— According to the Official History of the War Veterinary Services, it was 484,143.
— Michael Morpurgo, on the other hand, says he asked the Imperial War Museum before writing War Horse in 1982, and was told ‘at least a million’.
— And on the German side? 9,586,000, according to the dedication of a German history of the war published in 1929.
Sick buildings
Hammersmith Flyover has been closed because it has a form of corrosion known as ‘concrete cancer’. Some other victims:
— Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, demolished in the late 1980s
— A wall in the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, retained from Cardiff Arms Park
— 600 council houses in Bristol
— 143 street lights in Weston-super-Mare
— Birmingham Central Library, according to the city council, which wants to demolish it; critics who want it listed disagree.
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