John Lubbock wanted workers to have more holidays throughout the year, but MPs were industrialists and unconvinced workers needed more time off. So he proposed the ‘Bank Holiday Bill’, knowing that banks needed to close at various times during the year, and if the banks were formally closed no business could be done. “If we had called our bill the “General Holiday Bill” or the “National Holiday Bill” I doubt that it would have been approved. But the more modest name the “Bank Holiday Bill” attracted no attention”.
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The football club had no choice but to get creative after high transfer spend, high wages, and the departure of Lionel Messi. The manager turned to players from its youth academy – La Masia – who lacked experience but made up for it with chemistry, having played together since they were kids. The team went on to win the league in 2023, reigniting the Barca emphasis on possession football, and establishing Gavi, Pedri, and Lamine Yamal as key parts of the side.
Basketball is definitely not a sport of equal opportunity. Height is so important, that if you know an American man taller than 7ft (and aged between 20 and 40), there is a one-in-six chance he will currently be playing in the NBA.
After a dog walker found a mysterious crater on a beach near Dublin, the media quickly claimed it was a meteor strike from a cosmic event. That was until someone on Twitter revealed the truth: “Lads I’m in bits. Some fellas literally dug it the day before with a kid’s shovel.”
You’d think it would be impossible to make music without the ability to hear. But Ludwig Van Beethoven, arguably the finest composer of music the world has ever seen, became fully deaf at the age of 44. He taught himself to ‘hear’ with his body, placing his teeth on the keyboard and using lower notes that he could feel more clearly. During this period he composed some of his greatest works, including the Moonlight Sonata and his only opera Fidelio.
Many of the principles in Behavioural Science directly contradict one another.
– Are we more likely to remember the first word on a list (primacy) or the last word on a list (recency)?
– Do we prefer trying a new restaurant for dinner (novelty) or sticking with our local favourite (status quo)?
– Does repeatedly hearing a false statement make us believe it (illusory truth effect) or reject it (backfire effect)?
If you look past the hype, BeReal is actually pretty niche: it has 2 million users in the UK, far less than Pinterest or even Nextdoor, and 70% of them are 18-24.
When Megan Thee Stallion released her ‘Savage’ remix, featuring a line about Beyonce joining OnlyFans. The site saw a 15% spike in traffic.
The pandemic transformed our travel habits – but not for long. After a surge in 2020, bike sales in 2023 were 33% below pre-pandemic levels, and the lowest in the UK since 1985.
Bing.com’s UK reach rose from 33% in January 2023 to 46% in May 2023 following the introduction of Bing AI, which featues an AI chat response (like ChatGPT), an email drafting tool and the ability to create images.
Why do birds have wings? It’s only recently that they’ve been used for flying. They were initially developed for insulation, arranged in multiple layers to preserve heat, before their shape evolved for camouflage and finally for flight.
It serves more champagne than any restaurant in the UK. The trick? Make it easy: each table is equipped with a “Press for Champagne” button.
Being too thin