15th November

The Deutschmark was introduced in Weimar Germany today in 1923. Inflation was so galloping that a loaf of bread cost 200,000,000 marks. Anybody having a coffee in the Alexanderplatz in Berlin paid for it before they sat down. By the time they got up, it might cost ten time the starting price.

In other news ...
William Pitt the Elder, the Earl of Chatham, was born today in 1708. Because of his relatively humble birth, he was sometimes called the Great Commoner. There were those who believed they didn't come any greater. And there were those who believed you couldn't be any commoner. Well done to his parents though, for their foresight in actually calling him William Pitt The Elder Earl Of Chatham. A bit of a mouthful at the font, perhaps, but it no doubt helped him in his early parliamentary days.

25th January

Exactly thirty one years ago, the 'Gang of Four' came into being. No, not the Chinese counter-revolutionaries of the same name, but a rather more benign quartet - David Owen, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and Bill Rodgers. They broke away from the Labour Party and formed the Social Democrats, which to those of us with an historical bent sounded like something out of the German Weimar Republic back in the Twenties. They spent most of their time deciding exactly what their party should be called so that today we have that august and impressive body known as the Lib-Dems.
Well done, guys!

In other news ...
Al Capone died today in 1947. As mobsters go he was right up there with Paul Muni, Robert de Niro, Neville Brand, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp. At the height of his power he ran a vast bootlegging empire based in Chicago and is reckoned to have earned $105 million in 1927 alone (more or less my annual teacher's salary). By the time of his death, he had nothing and had done eleven years in prison for tax evasion.
So crime doesn't pay, then. Unless you're a taxman.