5 things we learned this week

1

JELLY hasn’t always been a kids’ food. The wibbly-wobbly treat was once considered a gastronomic luxury, says culinary writer Felicity Cloake in The New Statesman, and big occasions often had centrepiece jellies. In 1407, a feast celebrating the appointment of the Bishop of London featured ‘a demon arguing with a doctor of divinity in a jelly-filled castle set in a custard moat’.

2

THE inaugural Scottish Tree Hugging Championship was won by Alasdair Firth, 50, who lives in the woods on the Morvern peninsula in the West Highlands, and came dressed as a tree. Events included hugging as many trees in one minute as possible and a ‘freestyle’ category – in which contestants hugged trees in the weirdest way possible.

3

CHINESE witnesses can swear their oath of honesty in English courts over a cracked saucer. The obscure practice – followed by a legal clerk declaring: ‘The saucer is cracked and if you do not tell the truth, your soul will be cracked like the saucer’ – dates from the 19th Century, says online newsletter author Ned Donovan. Chinese seafarers in London weren’t used to the Western concept of judicial oaths so ‘they came up with something theatrical but sincere’ to keep lawyers happy.

4

SELF-DRIVING ships are slowly becoming a reality. The unmanned Mayflower Autonomous Ship successfully navigated the Atlantic last month using artificial intelligence, says Rebecca Heilweil in Vox. In Norway, an autonomous container vessel ‘shuttles fertiliser between a factory and a local port’. And in Knoxville, Tennessee, a selfdriving water taxi has been built. The hope is that artificial intelligence will make better calculations about routes and speeds, saving time and fuel.

5

ITALIAN mobsters are embracing TikTok videos, with gangsters putting films on the app of themselves swigging expensive champagne and flashing designer watches – accompanied by threatening messages targeted at rival gangs. Older, more discreet bosses aren’t happy. A wiretap has recorded Antonio Abbinante, a Neapolitan mobster, complaining about the increased police pressure brought on by the TikToks of younger associates. ‘I am going to split open the head of whoever did this,’ he says.