Flavour of the month: January – robots, Dr Who and The Beatles

Welcome to the month that faces backwards to last year and forwards to this – which is why it’s named after Janus, the Roman god of transitions, who himself has two faces. Read on to discover January’s trivia, including a joke from Stevie Wonder, a mistake by David Blunkett’s officials, and the reason Heather Mills thinks her daughter is musical …

1 January 1900 – Nigeria becomes a British protectorate. Today the country is home to approximately one-fifth of the world’s black population. (230 million out of 1.2 billion.)

2 January 1921 – premiere of the play R.U.R. by the Czech writer Karel Capek. The play gave us the word ‘robot’ – the roboti are artificial people used to perform tasks for humans.

4 January – World Braille Day. For David Blunkett’s first meeting as education secretary with Tony Blair, his officials gave him notes produced by the braille machine they’d purchased specially.