5 THINGS WE LEARNED THIS WEEK

1 Rolls-Royce’s top-range cars have a feature called Starlight Headliner – 1,340 individually hand-woven fibre-optic lights that twinkle above the head of the driver and every passenger. The panoramic constellation can be personalised to each owner – to match a birthday or important anniversary – and features more than a mile of cabling.

2 For a perfect pint of Guinness, never use a glass that’s been cleaned with detergent as it’s vital that the creamy foam clings to the inside. In Ireland, this is called the ‘schtick’, according to the FT’s Nate Brown. Then pour in two stages before finally slamming the glass on the table.

3 People in Iceland read – and write – a lot of books. About one in ten publishes a book in their lifetime while, on average, they read more than two books a month, says Jonathan Margolis in Air Mail. Possible explanations for this are the 21-hour winter nights and the country’s storytelling tradition.

4 When Elvis Presley died in 1977, he weighed 25 stone. He routinely ate breakfast in the late afternoon, reportedly going through a pound of bacon at a time, says Far Out Magazine. ‘He drank so much Pepsi it was delivered to Graceland in a distribution lorry.’ And it was said his love of Spanish omelettes caused a Tennessee-wide egg shortage.

5 Uranus was almost named after George III. When the astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet from his garden in Bath in 1781, he called it Georgium Sidus, or George’s Star. However, the stargazing community took a dim view of this and settled on a name from Greek mythology.