Flavour of the month: July – cycling, chocolate and an Isle of Wight invasion

In a new monthly series, Spectator Life will be bringing you facts, stories and items of general wonderment associated with the month ahead. Welcome to July – where we learn what ‘Twix’ is short for, why England’s World Cup-winning footballers painted white stripes on to their boots and how many times Charles and Diana met before their wedding…

• 1 July 1903: The first ever Tour de France gets under way. If you think the race has had its controversies in recent times, you should have seen it in the early years. Competitors sometimes had themselves towed along by cars, or simply got into the car for a lift. Others took the train. Meanwhile fans of particular riders would sabotage their opponents’ chances by cutting down trees to block their path, spreading nails on the road to give them punctures, or – taking as direct an approach as possible – simply beating them up.