5 things we learned this week

1 A thousand years ago, England was hot

enough to produce delicious wine. William of Malmesbury, a 12th Century historian, wrote approvingly of the ‘delightful’ drink produced in his native Wiltshire. But by the Victorian era, temperatures had declined, as had the quality of the booze. A

popular magazine joked that drinking English wine required four people – ‘one to drink it, two to hold him down, and the other to force it down his throat’.

2 English planning laws were designed to stop Peeping Toms. Outside cities,

there must be a minimum distance of 70ft between the windows of any two houses that face each other, to prevent ‘overlooking’. The precise distance was arrived at when Edwardian urban planners Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin

decided they had to ‘protect the modesty of women’. The two men went to a field and walked away from each other until

they couldn’t see each other’s nipples through their shirts.

3 Tuna sandwiches from Subway in the US are unlikely to contain tuna. A lawsuit against the firm says that when a marine biologist analysed samples from 20 different outlets, 19 had ‘no detectable tuna DNA sequences’.

4 Queen’s first Greatest Hits collection is the UK’s bestselling album ever. Released in 1981, it recently spent its 1,000th week in the British album charts. It has sold seven million copies, and is owned by one in every four households in the country.

5 Marmite can help you beat stress. It is packed with B vitamins which calm the brain, according to a new study. Of course, if you’re among the 50 per cent who detest the divisive spread, says the Daily Star, it might have ‘the opposite effect’.

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