Anglosphere

As 2010 ends, we look back at unusual words: "Ilanaaq" is the Inuktitut word for friend, and Ilanaaq the Inunnguaq was the mascot of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. We also learned that "Eyja" is island, "Fjalla" is mountain and "Jökull" is glacier.

The 2011 Rugby World Cup will be the biggest sporting event ever held in New Zealand. More than 100,000 fans are expected to travel to the Southern Hemisphere for the games and the parties that start on 10 September and end on 22 October next year.

Tony and Maureen Wheeler met in London's Regent's Park and married a year later. With an old car, a few pounds in their pockets and a sense of adventure, they then set off on the trip of a lifetime. When it ended, Lonely Planet was born.

If you passed through Terminal 5 in Heathrow Airport late last summer, you might have seen a man sitting at a desk in the departures area. He wasn't looking for boarding passes. He was writing a book. The result is titled A Week at the Airport.

On 2 February 1659, Jan van Riebeeck produced the first wine in South Africa. Today, the vintages of Paarl, Stellenbosch and the Northern Cape are enjoyed around the world. They'll be enjoyed during the World Cup next month, too.

Most of us didn't know that volcanic ash could cause airplanes to crash. And we didn't know that there were volcanoes in Iceland capable of sending so much of that ash into the atmosphere. But now we know how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull.

South Africa is a multitude of magnificent experiences, from the colonial towns of the Garden Route to the vast plain of the Karoo. Then there's the glamour and the glitz of Cape Town and its coastline as photographed by Franz Marc Frei.

On 24 July 1911, Hiram Bingham first saw Machu Picchu, which had been forgotten by the world. Bingham is recognized as the man who "rediscovered" the Incan city. Today, the Hiram Bingham Highway carries visitors to the site from the Urubamba River.

It sounds an unlikely place for a beach holiday, but Abu Dhabi has hundreds of kilometres of coastline as well as remote islands with palm trees and white sand. Lonely Planet has named Abu Dhabi as one of the top ten cities to visit in 2010.