Five things we learned last month

Photos: Amr Nabil/AP/Press Association Images, Fiona Hanson/PA Archive/Press Association Images, Sakchai Lalit/AP/Press Association Images, AP/Press Association Images, AP/Press Association Images

Issue #17 of Delayed Gratification has been out for a few weeks now and we are starting to pull together issue #18. In our search for fresh perspectives on the big events of the previous quarter, as well as the smaller stories that deserved more attention, we have come across some great facts. Here are our five favourite bits of trivia learned in March.

1) According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Saudi Arabia more than doubled its annual arms imports between 2013 and 2014. In doing so, they became the world’s second-largest importer of major weapons last year, out-bought only by India.

2) Of the fifty-two verified super-centenarians (people aged 110 or older) alive today, 50 are women. The top countries for reaching a ripe old age are Japan, with 19 living super-centenarians, and the US, with 15. There is only one person left in the world who was a subject of Queen Victoria – 115-year-old Violet Brown of Jamaica.

3) The equestrian events of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics were held in Stockholm, Sweden. The disciplines of show jumping, dressage and eventing could not take place in Australia because of its strict quarantine regulations, which stated that horses had to be quarantined for six months prior to being shipped into the country. Australian authorities decided in 1953 that they would not change the federal law for Olympic horses, and Stockholm was chosen by the IOC as an alternative location. The equestrian competitions took place there in June 1956, five months prior to the rest of the Olympic games.

4) French fashion designer Coco Chanel has been credited with accidentally inventing sunbathing. In 1923, she caught the sun during a Mediterranean cruise and when she disembarked in Cannes, her tan turned into a global trend.

5) The UAE-based property developers Sweet Homes are enticing potential home-buyers by throwing in passports from the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda for families who purchase a two-bedroom villa in the emirate of Ajman. Citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda comes with visa-free or visa-on-arrival travel to 132 countries, while for people with Emirati passports that number is just 77.

Posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 - Categories: Extras, Things we've learned.