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 |
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