British fine arts auction house Christie’s was founded in 1766 and its founder, James Christie, was an intimate friend of the painters Gainsborough and Reynolds and the playwright Garrick. Fast forward to 2015 and it is one of the world’s leading auction houses with sales totalling $7.4 billion. Notable auctions have included Elton John’s car collection, a $22 million Qing Dynasty porcelain bowl, a $3.5 million Stradivarius violin, an $80 million Monet painting, the Oppenheimer Blue diamond, and many top works by Picasso, Mondrian, Klimt and Matisse.

Why spend a year and thousands of dollars being drip-fed an MBA when you can buy a $10 course that condenses it all into a few hours? How much of the detail of a full-fat MBA will you actually remember and apply to your career anyway?

‘Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity - the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.’

-Bill Gates

You can take an online course in almost anything these days: cookery, Excel, painting, how to be a cyber criminal, pottery, horticulture …

Wait a second, go back a bit. How to be a cyber criminal? There’s a course for that?

In 1233 a papal bull decreed that anyone admitted to the mastership at the University of Toulouse should be allowed to teach freely in any other university. Ever since then it has been set in stone that the rite of passage into a master’s degree is a three or four-year undergraduate degree. Pretty much by definition, a master’s is a follow-on from a bachelor’s degree.

Global oil prices reached a historic peak in May 2008 at $143.91 a barrel. By January 2009 the price had plunged to $48.37. A gradual recovery from this slump continued until June 2014, when another massive crash took the price of oil back to 2009 levels.