Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

Such schmaltzy songs as "White Christmas", "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Let it Snow" were all by Jewish musicians.

The Library of Alexandria – built during the 3rd century BC to house the accumulated knowledge of centuries – reputedly had a copy (often the only copy) of every book in the world at the time. It burned to the ground sometime between Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt in 48BC and the Muslim invasion in 640AD. Some historians believe the loss of the Alexandrian library, along with the dissolution of its huge community of scribes and scholars, created the conditions for the Dark Ages that descended across Europe as the Roman empire crumbled from within.

A millennium of misery ensued, with ignorance and poverty the rule until the Renaissance dawned.

Paul Newman's blue eyes: cornflower blue, steel blue or ice blue?

"What is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records and Hollywood?" asked Adolf Hitler in 1940.

"Avatar", an enjoyable nonsense art.

No one in Hollywood cared what Emmanuelle wore, as long as she removed it. Her long, willowy body was rented out, to become the fantasy possession of thousands of devoted men. But her price was too high, and they would never have her.

Americans would sooner unplug their refrigerators than their cable boxes.

If Greece represented the first day in art, then these carved tusks and sculpted stones mark the dazzling light of its "early morning".

Last September the Boston Museum of Fine Arts bowed to public pressure and returned the top half of an 1,800-year-old statue called "Weary Herakles", which came from southern Turkey.

Left to the museum by an American couple, its documented provenance went back no more than 30 years, which suggests it was looted, probably in the late 1970s. Mr Erdogan himself brought this trophy back to Turkey, reuniting the head and torso with the statue's bottom half.

A classical scholar at Winchester College and at Oxford, Frank Thompson was proficient in nine languages and a voracious reader.

(He read "War and Peace" many times, once in Italian.)

"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers," Mahatma Gandhi once said.

Britain exports around 3 % of the world's goods and 6 % of the world's services, but the country's artists account for around 13 % of global music sales.

A sense of comedy is never far off.