5 THINGS WE LEARNED THIS WEEK

1

The British Army helped popularise beards in the Victorian era. During the Crimean War in the mid-1850s, says The Economist, soldiers were permitted facial hair on account of the extreme cold weather. The conflict was ‘the first to be extensively photographed’, and as images of whiskered soldiers were transmitted back to Britain, full beards ‘became associated with martial virtues’. This morphed into a requirement, until 1916, for soldiers to sport a tache.

2

In 1981, the modest Cross Hands Hotel in Chipping Sodbury had an unlikely guest: Queen Elizabeth II. Caught in a freak blizzard during her travels, the monarch was sneaked into the £65-a-night Gloucestershire B&B through a back door to avoid people making a fuss.

3

Coffee hasn’t always been something to sip. The earliest mention of coffee dates to the Abbasid Empire – which dominated the Middle East and North Africa in the 9th Century. But bunk, as it was called, wasn’t a beverage – people used the beans to make ‘aromatic compounds’ to mask the smell of sweat and food.

It only became a drink in the 15th Century.

4

The world’s deadliest animals aren’t the charismatic predators you might expect – mosquitos are the biggest killers of humans, knocking off about a million of us a year. They are followed by humans themselves – thanks to an estimated 475,000 homicides – and snakes (a comparatively lower 100,000). And with 700 human scalps a year, tapeworms outperform hippos (500), lions (250) and sharks (five).

5

The latest Miss France, Eve Gilles (pictured above), was the first woman with a pixie cut to reach the final in the pageant’s 103-year history. The 20-yearold maths student from Quaedypre, near Dunkirk, finished third in the public vote, but was the pick of the sevenwoman judging panel – prompting complaints on social media that the contest had gone ‘woke’. ‘We’re used to seeing beautiful Misses with long hair, but I chose an androgynous look with short hair,’ Gilles said after her victory.