What is special about Rochester and Strood?
— Rochester has the second oldest cathedral and school in Britain, after Canterbury.
— Medway, the unitary authority area in which the constituency is situated, has one of the highest rates of private home-ownership in Britain, with 92 per cent of homes in private hands.
— Rochester has one of the few remaining airports in Britain with only grass runways – though it has filed a planning application to build a paved runway.
— Morrisons in Strood was Gordon Brown’s first engagement after announcing the date of the 2010 general election.
— Strood was once the largest producer of steam rollers in Britain.
The deadliest battles
British involvement in the Afghan war came to an end after 13 years and the loss of 453 servicemen. How does that compare with other post-second world war conflicts?
British military deaths
Korean war, 1950-53
1,139
Falklands war, 1982
258
Iraq war, 2003-09
179
Aden emergency, 1963-67
90
Yugoslav civil war, 1991-1999
72
Gulf war, 1991
47
The cost of a domain
The domain name ebola.com
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When weeping Parisians watched Notre Dame, the city’s beloved 800-year-old cathedral, being consumed by a devastating fire in 2019, it served as a sad symbol of the decimation of churchgoing itself in France. Ever since revolutionaries began decapitating priests and nuns in the 1790s, a precipitous decline in Catholic faith has been underway in the
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