That’s how long the United Kingdom has been burning coal, a practice that is set to end today as the country’s final coal plant shutters for good, per the BBC.
The milestone is a significant one not just for the UK, which has been slowly reducing its reliance on coal for decades, but for the world: the very first coal-fired power station in the world was built in 1882 in London by Thomas Edison (yes, that Edison). Today, renewables generate ~50% of the UK’s electricity.
Between a top-spot finish in the group stage, a sweeping performance against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32, and the president’s controversial intervention, Monday evening’s USMNT game against Belgium had, to put it lightly, shaped up into a box-office clash.
And though the US players’ performance on the pitch might not have lived up to the high drama off it, American soccer fans certainly showed up. According to early estimates, the 4-1 defeat against Belgium was the most watched soccer telecast in US history, hauling some 40 million viewers on average across the coverage on Fox and Telemundo.
That may be a record tally in the US for the sport that much of the world calls some variant of “football” — besting the 36.2 million who tuned in to watch the team’s previous knock-out match — but it’s still peanuts in comparison to the sport that shares the same name in the States.
The platform will plow more money into its ad offerings as it cements itself as a “trove of human intelligence.”
