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News18
9 hours ago
- Business
- News18
Insurance Awareness Day 2025: History, Significance & 4 Types Of Life Insurance
National Insurance Awareness Day 2025: The day highlights the importance of insurance for financial security, encouraging policy reviews. National Insurance Awareness Day 2025: Observed on June 28 every year, National Insurance Awareness Day serves as a reminder of the critical role insurance plays in our lives. From health and life insurance to home and business coverage, insurance provides a financial safety net during unforeseen events, be it a medical emergency, accident or loss. However, this protection only works if premiums are paid consistently and on time. The COVID-19 pandemic served as a wake-up call for many, sharply increasing awareness around health insurance. Yet, a large section of the population still views insurance as an optional or unnecessary expense. This day encourages people to rethink that mindset. It's a moment to review existing policies, explore new ones, and most importantly, understand how insurance can secure your future and support your loved ones when it matters most. National Insurance Awareness Day 2025: History And Significance Did you know the origins of modern insurance date back to 1666? After the Great Fire of London destroyed large parts of the city, English economist and physician Nicholas Barbon established the first fire insurance company, The Insurance Office, near the Royal Exchange. His efforts laid the foundation for the vast insurance industry we know today. Since then, insurance has evolved far beyond fire protection. Today, we rely on it for health, automobiles, homes, life coverage, and even businesses. National Insurance Awareness Day, observed every year on June 28, serves as an important reminder to review your insurance policies. Are they still relevant to your current needs? Are your premiums up to date? Do you truly understand your coverage? This day is also about asking the right questions, clearing up confusion, and realising how insurance acts as a safety net during life's unpredictable moments. From financial setbacks to medical emergencies, the right insurance can provide stability when it's needed most. Awareness campaigns and events on this day aim to make insurance less intimidating and more empowering for everyone. National Insurance Awareness Day: Here's How You Can Observe Contact your insurance provider to check for any updates, offers, or changes in your premium. Compare different plans carefully before choosing, and ask for details to find the best policy for your needs. Remember, savings don't just come from switching plans. Taking steps like safe driving, installing home security, or staying healthy can also lower your insurance costs. National Insurance Awareness Day: 4 Common Types of Insurance And Why They Matter Insurance offers financial protection during unexpected events. Here are four important types you should know about: Life Insurance: It provides financial support to your family after your death. It ensures that your loved ones are taken care of by paying a set amount to the chosen beneficiary. Home Insurance: This insurance protects your house from damage caused by events like fire, storms, or other disasters. It covers the structure of your home and helps with repair or rebuilding costs. Health Insurance: It helps pay for medical expenses such as doctor visits, hospital stays, medicines, and routine check-ups. It can be offered by employers, government schemes, or bought individually. Auto Insurance: Auto insurance covers your vehicle in case of accidents, theft, or damage. It also includes liability for injury or damage caused to others. In many places, it's required by law to drive legally. These types of insurance are important because they help protect you and your family from financial stress during tough times. National Insurance Awareness Day 2025: Why Is Insurance Important? Insurance protects you and your family from unexpected expenses like medical bills, accidents, or loss of income. It gives peace of mind and helps you stay financially stable during tough times. Here's why it is necessary: About the Author Bhaswati Sengupta First Published: June 28, 2025, 07:10 IST
Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
The Times Daily Quiz: Friday June 20, 2025
1 Which event in 1666 destroyed more than 13,000 tightly packed wooden houses in London? 2 Which British charity launched its first plastic-free, plant-based Red Nose in 2021? 3 A new lifeline, 'Ask the host', was added to which TV quiz in 2018? 4 Which Asian country granted Mother Teresa citizenship in 1951? 5 The name 'Jack Tar' was given to members of which of the armed forces? 6 Which Take That member had his first solo No 1 single with Forever Love (1996)? 7 The Venetian dish, fegato alla veneziana, combines onions and which offal? 8 The prophet Jokanaan calls the title character of which Oscar Wilde play a 'daughter of Sodom'? 9 Which island in the Bristol Channel is named after the Old Norse for 'puffin island'? 10 Siderophile elements, such as platinum and rhodium, tend to bond with which metal? 11 The largest freshwater fish in North America is known as the white … what? 12 Which Canadian comedian plays a fictionalised version of himself in the TV series The Rehearsal? 13 Which South Korean author wrote the 2018 therapy memoir I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki? 14 Highland Games competitors who toss the caber must wear which Scottish garment? 15 Which Strictly Come Dancing co-host is pictured? Scroll down for answersAnswers1 Great Fire of London 2 Comic Relief 3Who Wants to be a Millionaire? 4 India 5 Royal Navy 6 Gary Barlow 7 Liver, usually calf's 8 Salome 9 Lundy 10 Iron 11 Sturgeon 12 Nathan Fielder 13 Baek Sehee 14 Kilt 15 Tess Daly
Time Out
17-06-2025
- General
- Time Out
Mapped: the Great Fire of London on top of the modern day city
It may have happened more than 400 years ago, but the Great Fire of London 1666 is still one of the worst disasters in London's history. The fire started at a bakery on Pudding Lane, 202 feet away from the Monument – which was erected to commemorate the disaster five years later, and still stands. It's largely thought that fuel or wood stored at the bakery was set alight by a spark from a nearby oven, then the blaze grew at a spectacular rate as a result of dry summer weather and a powerful easterly wind. The fire spread rapidly and devastated the city for four whole days, kept alive by densely packed wooden houses, thatched roofs and warehouses that were crammed with flammable materials. At the time, the blaze destroyed a quarter of 17th century London, left 100,000 homeless (miraculously only six deaths were recorded) and turned St Paul's Cathedral to ruins. To give you an better idea of just how mighty the fire was, a guy called Julian Hoffman Anton has produced a map that puts the Great Fire of London onto the city that we know today. If the same fire were to spread in 2025, it would, of course, engulf almost all of the City of London, plus most of Holborn and Fleet Street. The Walkie-Talkie would be gone, Bank would be flattened and Cannon Street station would be demolished – that's a lot of finance bros being forced to work from home. The map shows that it would narrowly miss Moorgate, the Gherkin and Somerset House. Scary stuff, eh? Luckily, shortly after the event it was decided that the capital probably needed a whole team of people who's job it was to stop fires, and the London Fire Brigade was born. So these days, they'll be on the scene. You can check out Julian Hoffman Anton map in more detail here.
The Mainichi
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Mainichi
Edging Toward Japan: Samuel Pepys and Sei Shonagon - the ultimate love match
A few weeks ago, I attended a rather unusual concert in Cambridge, England. All the pieces of music dated from the time of the famous English diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). My knowledge of the pop songs of the 1660s is not what it should be and I didn't have a particular strong conception of what music from this period actually sounds like. We are talking here about going back to a time before virtually all the famous classical composers -- before Beethoven, before Mozart, even before Bach. As it turns out however, the music of the 17th century gets on perfectly well without all of them and is teeming with beautiful pieces and charming songs played to the accompaniment of the strangest of instruments. We started off with some songs played on the spinet, a kind of early harpsichord, and then the musicians produced an extraordinary instrument called a "theorbo," which is an extravagantly oversized lute. Pepys himself loved music and probably owned the very spinet on which the songs were performed, and ordered the making of a "theorbo" which he proudly declared in his diary to be as good as any in the country. When not writing his diary or helping to run the British admiralty (his day job), he even composed songs himself. Of late, I've found myself getting more and more interested in Pepys and his world. Years ago, I listened to actor and director Kenneth Branagh reading extracts from the voluminous diary (which covers the years 1660-69) and recently I've been reading Claire Tomalin's prize-winning biography of Pepys, "The Unequalled Self". What is fascinating about Pepys is partly the turbulence of the time he lived -- the nine years of the diary cover the chaos and anxiety in England following the death of Oliver Cromwell, the initially jubilant restoration of Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666, and the war against the Dutch amongst many other happenings. But amidst all these mammoth events, there is the even greater fascination of being immersed in the domestic minutiae of Pepys' daily life, sharing with him his passions and disappointments, his surreptitious affairs and ambitions, his bowel movements and flatulations, his moments of anger, grief and joy. Tomalin recounts that Pepys was an astoundingly good diarist because for him every day of life was an adventure in human consciousness, filled with the sheer thrill of being alive, of being able to sense and enjoy everything the world had to offer -- its food, its music, its voluptuous women, its poetry, its conversation and company, its seasons and heats and frosts, and, not least, his cherished books. All these things were part of his all-consuming embrace of life that makes him a thrilling literary companion. These days, if I feel like disappearing for a while into an alternate universe, then I might turn to Pepys and transport myself back into the 1660s. Yet Pepys is not the only explorer of consciousness that I have turned to of late. On recent trips to Japan I wanted to introduce my two daughters to a writer who might capture their interest and so began listening with them to a reading (in English) of "The Pillow Book" by Sei Shonagon. As we had our breakfasts every morning in Japan, we would be transported to Sei Shonagon's world of the Imperial Court in Kyoto around the year 1,000 where Shonagon was a courtier. We would enjoy her sometimes caustic and always beautiful observations on the men and women around her, the changing colours of the mountains, the preferred etiquette of her lovers, the seasonal colours of the mountains, the sound of the flute in the night air... I must admit that I am a fairly recent covert to Sei Shonagon. In my younger days, I had a far greater appreciation of Shonagon's contemporary and rival, Murasaki Shikibu, the author of the monumental "The Tale of Genji". Shonagon seemed to me much the inferior of the two. But rediscovering "The Pillow Book" with my daughters, I now see that Shonagon is a much more fascinating, individualistic personality than I first appreciated. She is never less than her own woman and, like Pepys, is an admirably honest and perceptive contemplator of the sights, sounds and flavours of her own existence. Unlike Pepys, she was not keeping a day-to-day journal, but rather a compendium of observations on diverse subjects that cumulatively add up to an almost cubist portrait of a world now vastly lost in time. Sitting in an autumnal chapel in Cambridge, England, listening to the music of the 1660s, I found myself strangely thinking about Sei Shonagon and about how fundamentally similar she and Samuel Pepys were. In their professional lives, they were robust and worldly, but in their private lives they were seekers of (sometimes illicit) joy and things of beauty, candid in their assessments of themselves and others. I was thinking that this strange linkage of Samuel Pepys and Sei Shonagon was a whimsical idea all my own, when my daughter surprised me at breakfast the next morning by suddenly saying, "Last night I dreamt of Sei Shonagon and Samuel Pepys..." When I responded that I had been thinking about them too and that they would have made a great couple, my 14-year-old daughter recoiled in distaste at the idea. "Ugh!" And yet I'm still thinking it could have been a match made in heaven, or in hell, to put two such quick-witted, intelligent and highly opinionated minds together. We live in a world in which, to a tiresome degree, people are compartmentalised according to their nation, their race, their gender, their sexuality. Yet sometimes, people from vastly different cultures at completely different historical periods can appear profoundly similar in their thrilling engagement with the sheer mystery of being alive. We make a mistake, I suspect, when we keep Sei Shonagon cloistered in a room called "Heian Court Literature", alongside (to her probably insufferable) companions like Murasaki Shikibu. Pepys himself, I suspect, would have found boundless joy in the colours and beauty of the Heian court, stealing through the nighttime garden of a Heian lady, intent on begging entrance for a moonlit tryst. While Sei Shonagon longs, I think, to burst into a wider world, to explore Pepys' library of Western books, to smoke a pipe and drink some wine, and sing songs of love while Samuel flirtatiously accompanies her on the theorbo. @DamianFlanagan (This is Part 59 of a series) In this column, Damian Flanagan, a researcher in Japanese literature, ponders about Japanese culture as he travels back and forth between Japan and Britain. Profile: Damian Flanagan is an author and critic born in Britain in 1969. He studied in Tokyo and Kyoto between 1989 and 1990 while a student at Cambridge University. He was engaged in research activities at Kobe University from 1993 through 1999. After taking the master's and doctoral courses in Japanese literature, he earned a Ph.D. in 2000. He is now based in both Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and Manchester. He is the author of "Natsume Soseki: Superstar of World Literature" (Sekai Bungaku no superstar Natsume Soseki).
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The bombed London church that was reborn in the USA
As Londoners celebrated VE Day nearly 80 years ago much of the city in which they lived lay in ruins, not least the historic places of worship built by Sir Christopher Wren in the late 1600s in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London. While some would be repaired or rebuilt, others remained as shells, transformed into small public parks surrounded by a single wall or tower. However, one had a very different ending, being moved brick by charred brick more than 4,000 miles away and rebuilt at a college in the US Midwest. Why did St Mary Aldermanbury end up across the pond and what is it used for now? While St Mary Aldermanbury may have been destroyed in the Blitz, it wasn't the first time disaster had struck. Having been founded around the start of the 12th Century, the original medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire in 1666, then became one of the 52 sites, including St Paul's Cathedral, rebuilt by Wren. On 29 December 1940, St Mary Aldermanbury and seven other City churches were badly damaged during a particularly devastating night of the Blitz as waves of Luftwaffe planes dropped bombs over London in what some coined as "the Second Great Fire". With limited finances available in post-war Britain to do anything with it, the church remained a charred husk for two decades - until an unusual proposal arrived from Missouri. "It really dates back to the end of the war on VE Day, when Sir Winston Churchill gave his famous speech on the balcony saying 'this is your victory' to the British people," explains Timothy Riley, director and chief curator of America's National Churchill Museum. "It was a triumphant moment for all at the end of the war. But not long after there was a general election and Churchill's party lost." In the wake of that defeat, Britain's wartime leader received a letter from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, inviting him to give a speech, which included a message from US President Harry Truman saying: "This is a wonderful school in my home state. If you come, I'll introduce you." "I'm convinced that letter would normally have been given to a secretary by Churchill with the instruction to politely decline or refuse," Mr Riley says. "However, when he saw this handwritten note... having just lost an election and knowing that he had more to say, he anxiously/eagerly accepted the invitation and made his way to Fulton to give the Iron Curtain speech." The famous address, delivered on 5 March 1946, spelt out the deepening tensions between the West and the Soviet Union, and called for a special relationship to be forged between the US and UK. Fifteen years on from the speech, and with Churchill now in his 80s, thoughts turned to how the college could commemorate it. "Someone suggested a garden, someone suggested a statue, a plaque, and then the president of the college Robert Davidson said: 'Why don't we bring a ruined Christopher Wren church that was bombed in the Blitz, left abandoned for nearly 20 years in the City of London and rebuild it in Fulton?'," says Mr Riley. "The reaction, of course, was bafflement; how could we do such a thing? But that's what happened in the 1960s." After the initial suggestion was made in spring 1961, efforts began in earnest to gain permission to relocate the building and raise the $1.5m (the equivalent of more than $16m or £12m today) needed to do so. Backing was gained from several influential sources. President John F Kennedy became the project's honorary chairman until he was assassinated in 1963, with his successor Lyndon B Johnson then taking on the role. Previous presidents Truman and Dwight Eisenhower also publicly supported the cause. Back in the UK, Churchill endorsed the scheme, writing in a letter that it was an "imaginative concept", and following extensive discussions both the City of London and Diocese of London approved the move. In 1965 what remained of the church was dismantled piece by piece, with each of the 7,000 stones cleaned and then numbered so they could be placed in the same formation in their new home. Weighing more than 600 tonnes in total, they were taken by ship to Virginia, before being transported by rail to Missouri where the tricky task of rebuilding a wrecked 300-year-old building began. The Times branded it "one of the most intricate jigsaw puzzles in the history of architecture" and the project's mason, Eris Lytle, later described how he had to learn skills once used by Renaissance craftsmen to complete the project. With the monument completed in 1969, a service was held on 7 May to rededicate the church, attended by dignitaries from both sides of the Atlantic - although not Churchill who had died in 1965. Today, St Mary Aldermanbury isn't an active church but forms part of America's National Churchill Museum, based on the Westminster College campus. Yet as Mr Riley points out, it does maintain at least one link to its previous life. The bridge that crossed an ocean "It's a popular destination wedding venue - and also where you don't have to have a passport to get married in a 'British' church." He says the building is "perhaps the top tourist attraction in the middle of Missouri", and while those living in the area generally know about its history, "we still have a lot of people saying: 'I had no idea, it's extraordinary.'" As for the church's original site, beside the Guildhall, today it is a small park tucked among towers and modern office blocks of the City of London. Benches, trees and plant life surround a few remaining stones, while a large granite slab marks where the altar once stood. The site was refurbished last year with some of the funding coming from the museum, which also recently completed restoration work at St Mary Aldermanbury. "We've invested nearly $6m (£4.5m) into the preservation of the church so that we continue to be good stewards, so that it'll thrive and inspire and inform generations to come," says Mr Riley. Reflecting on the relocation of a bombed church to another continent, he believes it has become much more than a memorial to Churchill's Iron Curtain speech. "It is, I think, an extraordinary symbol of the Anglo-American relationship... and a constant reminder of the bond that our two countries continue to share in our own histories." Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to Churchill's favourite spy: Aristocrat who risked her life in WW2 Family visit fire boat named after Blitz heroine 'Mum was embarrassed about her WW2 bravery medal' America's National Churchill Museum St Mary Aldermanbury Garden
