Barometer

Family fortunes Louise Mensch became the latest MP to resign in order to spend more time with her family. The phrase has become something of a euphemism over the years to refer to somebody who has made a suspicious exit, not least because the original politician to resign for that stated reason — Norman Fowler from his job as employment secretary in January 1990 — did so a few months after the sudden departure of Nigel Lawson as chancellor of the exchequer. — That event signified a deep rift between Mrs Thatcher and her ministers, and presaged her downfall a year later. Fowler has since insisted that he really did want to spend more time with his family, which at the time consisted of a wife, Fiona,16-year-old stepson Oliver and daughters Kate, 8, and Isobel, 5.

Waiting games The Olympics have not even started yet, but already one world record is under threat: that for the world’s longest traffic jam. The first day of operation of an Olympic lane on the M4 led to a 32-mile tailback from the edge of London to Newbury in Berkshire. These are the records to beat: Longest jam Nothing has yet surpassed the 109-mile tailback on the A6 between Lyon and Paris on 16 February 1980, caused by Parisians returning home from their skiing holidays in poor weather Longest-lasting jam A record set, appropriately enough, in Beijing — although in 2010, two years after the last Olympics.

Out of proportion The bill to reform the House of Lords looks like being another failed attempt by Liberal Democrats to bring proportional representation to Westminster. But where did the idea of PR come from? — The first such system was proposed by Louis Antoine Saint-Just, a deputy in France's National Convention after the revolution. The suggestion was beaten down by Robespierre. — The first public election by PR was in Adelaide in 1840, instigated by Sir Rowland Hill, inventor of the postage stamp, while secretary of the Colonisation Commission of South Australia. He was inspired by a system used by his father, a Worcestershire schoolmaster, to elect committees.

Lost and found  A team from St Andrews University has published its attempts to map the remains of Doggerland, an area of land and later an island in the North Sea which disappeared around 5,500 bc as a result of rising sea levels after the last ice age. Some other possible lost lands: — Atlantis. According to Plato, it was a naval power close to the pillars of Hercules at the western end of the Mediterranean that sank in a day and a night in c. 9,600 bc after a failed attempt to conquer Athens. — Mu. Invented by a Victorian writer, Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed to have gleaned its existence from Mayan writings. Survivors of its rapid disappearance apparently went on to found ancient Egypt. — Lemuria.

Striking out Argentinian tennis player David Nalbandian was disqualified from the men’s final at Queen’s Club after he kicked out at an advertising hoarding, injuring the leg of a line judge sitting close by. It can be dangerous being close to a frustrated sportsman. — Former Manchester United player Eric Cantona executed a flying kick on a Crystal Palace fan after being sent off during a match in 1995. In 1987, while playing for Auxerre, Cantona punched his own goal-keeper, giving him a black eye. — In 2003, David Beckham received a cut above his eye in what his Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson described as a ‘freakish incident’ involving a flying football boot.

Breaking badA Ming vase sold for £550,000, having had a hole drilled in it to turn it into a table lamp. Without the hole it would have been worth four times as much. Owners of antiques work hard to keep them safe from thieves, but they are themselves often the problem. — Last year the owner of a £14,000 Japanese porcelain vase reduced its value to £2,000 by chipping it while he packed it for BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. — Last November the owner of a Qing vase took £200,000 off its value after she decided to chisel off the rim to even it up a bit. — Last week a $20m Stradivarius cello at the Royal Palace in Madrid was broken after it fell off a table during a photoshoot.

Marathon mortalitiesA 30-year-old hairdresser collapsed and died in the final mile of the London marathon, echoing the alleged fate of the world’s original marathon runner, Pheidippides, who according to legend ran 26 miles to Athens to announce victory in the Battle of Marathon in 490 bc before collapsing and dying. — A paper published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 1996 studied two US marathons over a period of 30 years and found that of 215,413 runners, three had died suddenly during the race, at distances between 15 and 24 miles, and one had died immediately afterwards. None had any previous signs of heart disease.

Local heroesThe BBC spent £2 million on fares to allow London-based staff to commute to its new studios in Manchester. There are some well-known people who live in Salford: — Harold Riley, artist — Mike Sweeney, DJ — Andy Whyment, actor And some Salford-born people who moved away: — Alistair Cooke, broadcaster — Ben Kingsley, actor — Albert Finney, actor — Robert Powell, actor — Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, composer Old boy networkRobert Mugabe is reported to be on the point of death aged 88. Africa has produced long-lived leaders and ex-leaders in spite of low general life expectancy.

Sinking feelingsSome conspiracy theories on the sinking of the Titanic: — The disaster was planned by a bunch of Jesuits, Captain Smith of the Titanic included, intent on bumping off Benjamin Guggenheim, Isa Strauss and Jacob Astor, who opposed the establishment of the US Federal Reserve and therefore impeded Jesuit efforts to control the global economy. — The ship that sank was really the Olympic, which had been damaged in a collision with a naval ship. When the Navy refused to pay compensation, the White Star Line scuttled it in an insurance scam. — The ship was sunk by the curse of Amen-ra, an Egyptian high priestess whose mummy was supposedly on board.

The Chicago schoolDavid Cameron has called for the building of a new generation of ‘garden cities’. In Britain the term is most associated with Letchworth, founded in 1903 by Ebenezer Howard, who formed the Garden City Association in 1899. His concept was for a series of towns with populations of up to 32,000, spread over 6,000 acres. — But the original garden city was, ironically, a city now more associated with the birth of the skyscraper: Chicago, which adopted the motto Urbs in Horto, ‘city in a garden’, in 1837, to describe the patchwork of buildings and gardens in its heart. — Howard lived in the city in the 1870s, a few years before some of those gardens disappeared beneath the early skyscrapers.

Catch a falling starAstronomers appealed to anyone who might have found a small, polished piece of rock: the remains of a meteor spotted as it streaked across Britain. Being hit by a meteorite has become a byword for an unlikely event, but just how unlikely is it? — One of the last cases of reported damage to property from a meteorite strike was in Park Forest, Chicago in 2003, when a meteorite shower caused damage to roofs, windows and cars. — The last death reported from a meteor strike was a cow in Venezuela in 1972. — The last credible report of a direct hit on a human was a woman injured in Alabama, in 1954. — But there is the potential for a catastrophe. In 1908, a large asteroid exploded in Siberia, burning 2,000 square metres of forest.

Sister shipsThe Costa Allegra, sister ship of the Costa Corcordia, suffered a fire off the Seychelles. Are families of ships jinxed? —The Titanic had two sister ships. The Olympic collided with a naval vessel off the Isle of Wight soon after its maiden voyage in 1911, and again with a lightship off New York in 1935. It survived both incidents, though the lightship sank, killing seven crew. The second sister ship, Britannic, was sunk after being torpedoed off the Greek island of Kea in 1916, a year after being launched, while serving as a hospital ship. —The Lusitania, which was torpedoed by a U-boat off Ireland in 1915 with the loss of 1,198 lives, had a sister ship, the Mauretania.

Cradle to graveThe Health Bill is one of numerous attempts to change the administrative make-up of the NHS. What did it look like on its first day, 5 July 1948? — There was a tripartite structure under the Minister of Health, Nye Bevan (who was also responsible for housing policy). — 14 regional hospital boards oversaw 400 hospital management committees. Teaching hospitals, however, remained under direct control of Whitehall. — An executive council oversaw GPs, dentists, pharmacists and opticians,all of whom were self-employed contractors paid proportionately to the number of patients on their books.

Long to reign over usThe Queen has become only the second British monarch to spend 60 years on the throne. To overtake Victoria, she would have to reign until 10 September 2015, but would still then be 19 years short of Sobhuza II of Swaziland, who began his reign on 10 December 1899, at the age of four months, and died on 21 August 1982. Some other long reigns: Louis XIV of France  1643–1715 Johannes II of Leichtenstein  1858–1929 Franz-Joseph I of the Austro-Hungarian empire  1848–1916 Bhumibol Adulyadei of Thailand  1946– Doctor suedThe Commons Public Accounts Committee revealed that the NHS has had to put aside £15.7 billion for future negligence claims.