From wikipedia:

Properties with between ten and twenty windows paid a total of four shillings, and those above twenty windows paid eight shillings.  The number of windows that incurred tax was changed to seven in 1766 and eight in 1825. The flat-rate tax was changed to a variable rate, dependent on the property value, in 1778. People who were ineligible for church or poor rates, for reasons of poverty, were exempt from the window tax.  Window tax was relatively unintrusive and easy to assess. The bigger the house, the more windows it was likely to have, and the more tax the occupants would pay. Nevertheless, the tax was unpopular, because it was seen by some as a tax on “light and air”.

The tax was imposed in Scotland in the 1780s, instantly explaining (almost) all of the buildings in Edinburgh with bricked-up windows.

Additionally, the tax is considered to be a possible origin of the phrase “daylight robbery”, though this remains unproven.

*Yes, yes. Technically, a bonobo is not a monkey. I know that. But in my mind’s fuzzy “primate” category, everything is a monkey. And it would annoy my lecturer less if I used the correct term, and where would the fun be. Also, monkeys are cuter**.

**Insinuations that I am not taking my Origins and Evolution of Language course entirely seriously, and am just treating it as a fun diversion from my really heavy subjects and overly complicated dissertation, may not be entirely unfounded. But surely enjoying a course, for whatever reason, is a good thing?

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated”. So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket. [Full story]