The daily rhythms of history’s greatest figures have been revealed.

NEXT time your alarm goes off first thing in the morning, maybe it’s not time to put on your slippers and shuffle off to the breakfast table, before jumping into the shower and heading off to work surrounded by the eerie silence that befalls public transport first thing in the morning.

Independence Day Reception hits the road

What do Finland’s Presidential Castle in Helsinki and the Tampere Hall have in common? Surely many things, but currently particularly the fact that the Presidential Reception on 6 December will take place in the latter instead of the former as is usually the case, and the reception programme has been adapted as well.

JANUARY

The first day of the year saw Finland cut the number of municipalities in the country from 336 to 320. Rumours of cutbacks in local services in many areas proved well-founded. Also, the country’s biggest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, changed its size from broadsheet to tabloid. In true Finnish fashion, no-one cared.

In 1703 tsar Petr I commanded to build a factory, and call it Petrovskii. Around this factory the city of Petrozavodsk was built and is the capital of Karelia. The city extends along the Onega Lake about 2,177 kilometres; the total area is 113 square kilometres. The population at this moment is 271,000 people, including more than 50 different nationalities, but for the most part Russians and Karelians.

A recent study has found that one in ten residents here between the ages of 25 and 34 are of foreign origin.

WHILE the inevitable movement of people around the globe is enough to make your average member of the Finns Party quiver in their boots, the fact of the matter is, either way you look at it, Finland is gradually becoming multicultural.