Here’s an easy one: where and when did the United Nations come into being? Easy peasy! San Francisco, 1945. Wrong! The correct answer is Washington, 1941. Every so often a journalist comes along and tells us something that we probably already knew but had forgotten. Thus, Simon Tisdall has created a little flurry of interest in the British media by telling us something that, actually, was already well known. Indeed, if you just Google ‘origins of the UN’ the right answer pops up straightaway. But if you didn’t know the story, or had forgotten it, you might like to read Tisdall’s article here. This includes the wonderful anecdote of how an excited FDR wheeled himself into Churchill’s guest room at the White House and blurted out his invention – ‘United Nations!’ – to a stark naked and ‘cherubic’ Winston, who was towelling himself down after a bath. This was on 29 December 1941, so this year marks, in a sense, the 70th anniversary of the UN.