Flavour of the month: October – MI6, guillotines and a Spectator lunch

This month’s trivia takes in the reason football became known as ‘soccer’, the reason iPhones have virtual keyboards rather than real ones, and the reason Spiro Agnew once made a hurried departure from a Spectator lunch.

• 1 October 1909 – the Secret Service Bureau was founded. This soon became the Secret Intelligence Service (or MI6), its first head being Mansfield Cumming, who operated out of his apartment in the building that now contains the Royal Horseguards Hotel. He signed his documents in green ink with a ‘C’ (both colour and initial are still used by the head of MI6). The chief’s forename was why Ian Fleming chose ‘M’ for his fictional head of the service in the Bond novels. Cumming (whose blue plaque now adorns the hotel) had a wooden leg, and while interviewing potential spy recruits he would suddenly stab it through his trouser leg with a letter opener – if the interviewee flinched they were rejected.