More or less a million
One in 79 Britons is now a millionaire thanks to property price rises. The word is first recorded in 1821, when £1 million was worth £100 million now. More modern-day values of millionaire:
£24 million: 1956, when Cole Porter’s song ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’. featured in the film High Society.
£20 million: 1962, when the Glaswegian song ‘Ma Maw’s a Millionaire’ was recorded.
£7.8 million: 1975, when Dr Hook released their song ‘The Millionaire’.
£1.7 million: 1998, when Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? began on British television.
Bigger bangs
A North Korean nuclear test was estimated as the equivalent of 50,000 tonnes of TNT. How does that compare historically?
| Little Boy: Hiroshima bomb on 6 August 1945 |
15,000 tonnes TNT |
| Fat Man: Nagasaki bomb three days later |
20,000 tonnes |
| Grapple Y: Largest UK N-test, April 1958 near Christmas Island | 3 million tonnes |
| Test Number 6: China’s largest test, Xinjiang, June 1967 | 3.3 million tonnes |
| Castle Bravo: largest US test, near Bikini Atoll, March 1954 | 15 million tonnes |
| Tsar Bomba: Soviet test in October 1961 at Mityushikha Bay, Siberia; still the world’s largest nuclear blast | 50 million tonnes |
Born three
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their third child. How unusual are third children? In 2012, 47 per cent of parents had one child, 39 per cent had two and 14 per cent three, but with wide regional variations in the proportion with three or more.
| HIGHEST PROPORTION | |
| Tower Hamlets | 28.4% |
| Newham | 24.7% |
| Hackney | 22.8% |
| LOWEST PROPORTION | |
| City of London | 8.8% |
| Isles of Scilly | 9.7% |
| North Tyneside | 11.6% |
Source: ONS
Industrial inaction
McDonald’s workers in Cambridge and Catford went on strike, a first for the company in Britain. Which industries are most and least prone to industrial action?
| MOST WORKING DAYS LOST PER 1,000 STAFF | |
| Education | 39 |
| Transport/storage | 35 |
| Health/social work | 33 |
| LEAST WORKING DAYS LOST PER 1,000 STAFF | |
| Financial | 1 |
| Construction | 1 |
| Wholesale/retail | <1 |
Source: ONS
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