This week's UK news: 20 December 2013
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20 December 2013


Top Google searches of 2013

Guess what question was most asked by people using Google to search the internet this year. They wanted to know what Twerking was. This is the bottom-wiggling dance made famous by Miley Cyrus earlier this year.

In the UK, top of the search list was Paul Walker. He is the Hollywood actor who died in a car crash in November. People also wanted to know what Zumba was (it is a dance fitness programme) and what YOLO means. YOLO stands for "You Only Live Once".


Queen complains that police are eating her snacks

We learned this week that the Queen likes to snack on nuts and spicy crackers as she works in Buckingham Palace. Her staff leave bowls of snacks in the rooms and corridors.

But the Queen got very cross because the police who protect her were eating the snacks themselves. So she marked the bowls so that she could prove that other people were eating her snacks, and a message was sent to the police telling them to "keep their sticky fingers out".

This story came out in a court case. Newspaper staff are accused of paying public servants for information, and also of listening to people's phone messages. Both of these things are illegal.


New visitor centre opens at Stonehenge

Stonehenge is one of the UK's most famous sights. It is a prehistoric stone circle, built around 4,500 years ago, and gets around one million visitors a year.

This week a new visitor centre was opened on the site. It includes films about the people who would have built the circle. You can also see how the people who built Stonehenge would have lived, and how they got the massive stones to the site.


Oxford museum given Chinese art collection

One of the world's best private collections of Chinese art has been given to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

The art was collected by Professor Michael Sullivan, who was the leading Western authority on Chinese art until he died in September. He has given the museum more than 400 works, which are worth more than GBP 15m.

Professor Sullivan went to China in 1940 where he drove lorries for the Red Cross. He fell in love with the country, and met his wife there. Later he founded the art museum at the University of Malaya, and later became professor of oriental art at Stanford University in the US.

 

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