From "The Mystery of Capital," by Hernando de Soto

Lawyers are the professionals most involved in the day-to-day business of property. They sit on the key government offices where they exert a stranglehold on major decisions. No group - aside from terrorists - is better positioned to sabotage capitalist expansion. And unlike terrorists, the lawyers know how to do it legally.


Using economic data from fifty-two countries from 1960 to 1980, Samar K. Datta and Jeffrey B. Nugent have shown that for every percentage point increase in the number of lawyers in the labour force (from, say 0.5 to 1.5 per cent), economic growth is reduced by 4.76 to 3.68 per cent...

History pop quiz!

Quick! Without looking any of these up, see if you can name one major historical event that happened on each of these dates, which are in no particular order. And yes, it's hugely skewed towards European/North American history. That's cause these are all from my own history-geek knowledge, and I'm hugely skewed towards European/North American.

1867
1776
1912
1865
1917
1215
1939
1066
622
1914
1918
1929
79
1347
2001
1969
1861
1963
1973
800
1961
1492
410
1968