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Barometer: Who snorts more cocaine — the rich or the poor? 

Plus: What brings immigrants here; the classes who attend Oxbridge; which is blacker — Black Monday or Black Friday

7 December 2013

9:00 AM

7 December 2013

9:00 AM

The darkest day

Several people were injured on ‘Black Friday’, a day of retail discounting imported from the US, where the fourth Thursday of November is the Thanksgiving holiday and many shops hold one-day sales the following day. There are at least 23 historic events named ‘Black Friday’, from the imprisonment of seven bishops by James II on 8 June 1688 to the hanging of four anarchists in Chicago on 11 November 1887 and the seizure of online poker sites by US authorities on 15 April 2011.

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