Peter Kimball, age 13, or Vancouver, Wash., for his question:

WHEN WAS LLOYD'S OF LONDON STARTED?

Lloyd's of London is an important insurance society. It is made up of individual members known as Lloyd's underwriters. The group originated in 1688 in a coffee house owned by a man named Edward Lloyd.

By the mid 1970s, Lloyd's had about 7,500 underwriters grouped into about 270 combinations called syndicates. These syndicates vary in size from a few people to several hundred.

Lloyd's provides its members with worldwide merchant shipping reports. The information is printed in a newspaper that has been published daily since 1734. It is England's oldest newspaper.

Lloyds pioneered many forms of insurance that have since become commonplace, such as burglary, loss of profits, hurricane and earthquake insurance. It sells only short term insurance.