Every newsroom worth its salt used to have a virtual fleet of London buses, along with a full-sized replica of Nelson's Column, together with a football pitch of FA-approved dimensions.

They were tools to help journalists get over to readers just how big, tall, wide, or whatever, something was.

So a new ship might be the length of so-and-so London buses, a skyscraper might be the height of 20 Nelson's........

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