Those of you who are sticklers for accuracy will doubtless applaud banking monolith HSBC and its splendid "Find your nearest branch" service.

To find out exactly how far you'll have to walk to avail yourself of an HSBC tentacle, just point your browser here, stick in your postcode and hit the "More info" button under one of the results.

Here's the precise distance between Vulture Central's London HQ and the bank's Gerrard Street branch:

According to very impressed reader Peter Flint, who sent in the tip, 17 decimal places represents atomic-scale accuracy. This means we now know just how far it is to our handiest HSBC to within a few electrons, which is extremely useful.

Since it's Friday, and you idle bunch of loafers are sat staring at the clock in anticipation of the first pint of the weekend, we'll leave it to you to work it out in femtometres. ®

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