Famous Caribbean bar moves to London

The Goring is one of the most famous hotels in London at the moment. This is because Kate Middleton and her family stayed there in the days before she married Prince William in this year's Royal Wedding.

Now the Goring Hotel is back in the news, because a beach bar has been opened in its gardens. This beach bar is an offshoot of Basil'’s Bar, on the Caribbean island of Mustique. This is a place where the rich and famous go on holiday, including the Middleton family, Mick Jagger, Amy Winehouse and Prince William.

Basil Charles, who owns the Mustique bar, said he thought it would be fun to open a temporary bar in London. It sounds like fun: 84 tons of white sand have been put in the hotel garden, with a beach shack serving rum cocktails, two old fishing boats and 200 coconuts. It is open until September.

Rain? What rain?

The rest of the world thinks it rains all the time in the UK. Not so. Four major regions of the UK are being declared drought zones because so little rain has fallen.

This spring has been the warmest since 1659 and the second driest since 1910. East Anglia, a region to the East of London, has had only a fifth of its average rainfall.
The dry areas are Wales, the South West, the Midlands and East Anglia.

Wimbledon tennis tournament to be shown in 3D

The Wimbledon tennis tournament, played in London, is one of the biggest sporting events in the UK. Now the BBC, our public service broadcaster, has announced that it will show the men's and women's finals in 3D this year.

This will be the first time the British public have been able to see a 3D TV broadcast without paying a subscription. Viewers will need a special television and a set-top box. The BBC has also said it will arrange a small number of free public screenings and that the broadcasts will be shown in a limited number of cinemas.

This is not the first time the BBC has experimented with new TV technology when showing Wimbledon. 44 years ago, the tournament was shown in the BBC's first colour television broadcast. Before that, all programmes were shown in black and white.

Did this girl’s death inspire William Shakespeare?

If you have studied Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, you will remember how Hamlet's girlfriend Ophelia died when she fell into a river as she picked flowers.

Now historians think Shakespeare may have based the death of Ophelia on a real drowning. They have found records of the death of a little girl called Jane Shaxpere, who died picking flowers, when she fell into a river.

Jane drowned only 20 miles away from where Shakespeare was living, when he would have been five years old. It is also possible that Jane Shaxpere and William Shakespeare were related as their family names sound very similar.