The past year has been the second warmest on record, the UK Met Office said yesterday, despite the summer being disappointingly cool.
It said provisional figures show that only 2006, with an average temperature of 9.73˚C was warmer than 2011’s average temperature of 9.62˚C.
Unusually warm autumn and spring temperatures meant that apart from January, the only other months that had below-average temperatures were June, July and August.
2011 was also one of the driest – or the wettest, depending on where one lives – with Scotland suffering its dampest ever year but some English regions seeing some of their driest ever months and a drought order granted in the South East earlier this month.
Christmas bonus
A family who left their winning lottery ticket under their tree for two days without checking it received the ultimate present when they found out they had won on Christmas Day.
Karen Shaw and her family won £1 million in the special EuroMillions Millionaire Raffle on December 23, but did not check their numbers until two days later. After opening presents with her husband, Anthony, 43, and children Sara, 22, and Karl, 20, at their home in Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, she did not look at the winning ticket until around 4 p.m.
Mrs Shaw, 44, said she had bought tickets for each of them on a whim.
Samoa’s missing day
Samoans go to bed on a Thursday and are waking up on Saturday (today) in an historic timezone switch.
Samoa currently sits to the east of the international date line – which runs through the middle of the Pacific – meaning that it is 11 hours behind GMT and is one of the last places on Earth to see the dawn. At midnight on Thursday Samoa will become instead one of the first places to experience the new day, omitting Friday (yesterday) December 30 entirely and jumping 24 hours ahead to Saturday (today) as it moves west of the dateline.
Guests staying in Samoan hotels this week will not be expected to pay for a day that does not exist, but a government edict tells employers they must still pay staff for the Friday that never was.
Robber gets a knock-out
US police say a would-be robber who demanded money from a store clerk got a fistful.
Before he could run off with any cash, the clerk at the We Buy Gold store in Hendersonville punched him in the nose. Sergeant Dale Patton said 25-year-old Mostafa Kamel Hendi dropped to the floor.
The clerk, 26-year-old Derek Mothershead, then grabbed the gun – it turned out to be a pellet gun – and called police. Hendi lay bleeding on the floor until he was arrested. Sgt Patton says the clerk was on high alert because the store had already been robbed once recently.