Inflation and earnings: what is the cost of a pint of beer?

From the Telegraph

"It were all so much cheaper when I were a lad... or was it? Professor Ian Stewart looks at how the money in your pocket has really changed over the years.

The price of a pub pint of beer could soon go up to £4 and ‘has doubled in the last 19 years’ said The Guardian a while back, in an article warning about the soaring price of barley. ‘Car road tax was a mere £10 in 1950 - think of what it is today,’ wrote a motoring journalist in a different paper. Every day we are bombarded with this kind of historical comparison of prices, intended to show how everything is soaring out of control and how badly off we all are.

It sounds plausible. My first house was worth £1100 in 1971, but it would sell for about £230,000 today. That’s a big increase. But how big?"

History of drugs: Narcotics antiquitus

From the Indy

"The illegal drug business is, we know, colossal, gigantic, oceanic.

After arms and oil, it's the biggest money-spinning market on the planet, pulling in £200bn every year. And soon we'll be celebrating, if that's the word, 50 years of its illegality. It was in 1961 that the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was launched, and we can see how successful that well-meaning organisation has been. But does anyone think that the phenomenon of people getting off their heads goes back only as far as the early 1960s?Try this for size. It's the report of a dope-fest that took place on the Bay of Biscay in the 1670s, recorded by one Thomas Bowrey, an English sea captain. He and his friends watched with interest the weird reaction of the locals to a liquid called bhang, made from crushed cannabis pods mixed with milk, and thought they'd try it themselves. They each bought a pint (for the equivalent of sixpence), locked themselves in a house and knocked it back."

Location, location and how the West was won

From the BBC

"On his current visit to Beijing, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said China will soon reclaim its position as the world's biggest economy - a role it has held for 18 of the past 20 centuries. But how did the US, Britain and the rest of Europe interrupt this reign of supremacy? It comes down to location.

Why does the West dominate the world?

Europeans have been asking this question since the 18th Century, and Africans and Asians since the 19th. But there is still not much agreement on the answers."

Simon Schama: my vision for history in schools

From the Guardian

"In these economically and politically tricky times we need history's long look more than ever, says historian and government adviser Simon Schama, as he sets out six of the key events no child should miss out on."

BBC film unearths Beatles photos

From the BBC

"Unpublished photos of The Beatles taken in 1963 when they spent a week at the seaside in Somerset have surfaced during the making of a BBC film.

Just before Beatlemania broke out, the band played twice-nightly for six days at Weston-super-Mare's Odeon Cinema."

Digger finds Neolithic tomb complex

From the BBC

"Archaeologists on Orkney are investigating what is thought to be a 5,000-year-old tomb complex.

A local man stumbled on the site while using a mechanical digger for landscaping."

Bronze Age hoard found intact in Essex field

From the BBC

"Archaeologists have unearthed a collection of Bronze Age axe heads, spear tips and other 3,000-year-old metal objects buried in an Essex field.

The items include an intact pottery container with heavy contents which has been removed undisturbed."