Stories: United Kingdom — Page 2

Stories connected to United Kingdom.

• He arrived for running in a three-piece suitFauja Singh turned up for his initial coaching dressed in a three-piece suit. His coach had to start with the…
• The strange shape below the portraits becomes a skullHolbein’s 1533 painting The Ambassadors includes a stretched shape below its two figures. An anamorphic disto…
• Counterclockwise, with an old-fashioned atmosphereWiddershins means counterclockwise. The dictionary marks this sense as archaic and now chiefly associated wit…
• Welsh laverbread is a seaweed pasteLaverbread is a Welsh food made from seaweed cooked into a soft paste. Despite its name, it is not bread. It…
• The victory vase was too heavy for the galleryA marble urn originally intended for Napoleon passed to Britain after his defeat and was carved to celebrate…
• The obituary appeared while he was in AustraliaBritish politician John Stonehouse disappeared from a Miami beach in November 1974, leaving clothes behind. H…
• A gorilla who made his bed and drank teaJohn Daniel lived with humans in Uley, England, from 1918 to 1921. Accounts describe him making his bed, drin…
• A dog found the stolen World Cup trophyThe World Cup trophy was stolen from a London display in March 1966. A week later, Pickles found the newspape…
• A department-store lion met his former owners in KenyaChristian was bought from Harrods in London in 1969. As he grew, his owners sought expert help to return him…
• A rotating lift carries boats between canal levelsScotland’s Falkirk Wheel opened in 2002 as a rotating boat lift. Boats remain afloat in water-filled containe…
• The explorer also wrote about his catTrim was born aboard ship in 1799 and accompanied Matthew Flinders on voyages mapping Australia’s coast in 18…
• London had an underground railway for postLondon’s Post Office Railway opened in 1927, using small driverless trains to move mail between sorting offic…
• He made some of the mess he was rewarded for clearingBritish assistance dog Endal helped Allen Parton with shopping, laundry and handling ATM cards. Parton also r…
• The claimant could not speak the heir’s childhood languageIn 1866, an Australian butcher claimed to be Roger Tichborne, a missing British heir. Roger’s mother accepted…
• The distillery cat had a record near 29,000 miceTowser caught mice at Scotland’s Glenturret distillery from 1963 to 1987. Her Guinness-recognised total was 2…
• His captors doubted the parachute-free escapeIn March 1944, RAF airman Nicholas Alkemade jumped from a burning bomber without a usable parachute. Trees an…
• The gold boxes reached Paris with lead insideOn 15 May 1855, gold bound for France was stolen from a train in England and replaced with lead. The boxes co…
• Demolished buildings contributed to a new villageClough Williams-Ellis built Portmeirion in Wales between 1925 and 1975. Its Mediterranean-inspired setting in…
• The bedroom intrusion happened; the long conversation is disputedMichael Fagan entered the Queen’s bedroom at Buckingham Palace on 9 July 1982. Early reports described a prol…
• The sunken battleship stood bow-down in the seabedHMS Victoria sank after colliding with another British ship during manoeuvres off Lebanon in 1893, with heavy…
• The owner built an underground hall but never hosted a dance thereThe fifth Duke of Portland had rooms and tunnels built beneath his English estate in the nineteenth century.…
• The cat toured town while his owner was at workIn 2009, Casper’s owner in Plymouth, England, discovered that her cat was riding buses. Drivers described him…
• A false report of Napoleon’s death moved London’s marketIn February 1814, a man claiming to be an officer arrived in Dover with news that Napoleon had died. As the s…
• Men protesting tolls adopted the name Rebecca’s DaughtersBetween 1839 and 1843, farmers and agricultural workers in Wales protested burdens including road tolls. Some…
• The navy enlisted a dog to solve his train-fare problemJust Nuisance, a Great Dane in Simon’s Town, South Africa, followed sailors onto trains. When the railway obj…
• In Britain, 2 September 1752 was followed by 14 SeptemberWhen Britain changed calendars in 1752, Wednesday 2 September was followed by Thursday 14 September. Eleven d…
• The ship’s dog had a pass for Scottish busesDuring the Second World War, Bamse lived with a Norwegian ship’s crew stationed in Scotland. The sailors boug…
• An attack on a harbour acquired a very personal nicknameIn 1587, Francis Drake’s fleet raided Cádiz in Spain, destroying or capturing ships and supplies. The expedit…
• A wine-cellar excavation grew into decades of tunnellingWilliam Lyttle began digging a wine cellar beneath his London home. From the 1960s into the 2000s, the work e…
• Widespread sheep escapes were reported in England in 1888On the night of 3 November 1888, many sheep reportedly escaped enclosures across Oxfordshire, England. The ne…
• The Battle of the ShirtsScottish clans fought near Loch Lochy in 1544. Tradition explains the name Battle of the Shirts by saying the…
• A jury, a marriage and some baconThe Dunmow flitch tradition in England rewards couples who swear they have not regretted their marriage for a…
• War scares at home, a toast on the groundIn 1898, French and British-Egyptian forces met at Fashoda, in present-day South Sudan. Their colonial rivalr…
• A damaged home and a fleetA mob attacked British subject David Pacifico’s home in Athens in 1847. The unresolved compensation dispute b…
• Feet made for one particular catOscar, a cat from Jersey, lost both hind paws in a 2009 accident. Veterinary and engineering work produced pr…
• The promoted penguin has successorsNils Olav at Edinburgh Zoo is a mascot of Norway’s King’s Guard. The name and associated ranks have passed th…
• A cat needed a mail officerSimon, the cat aboard HMS Amethyst, resumed catching rats after recovering from injuries in the 1949 Yangtze…
• Not riding, so others could workThe 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott challenged a policy excluding Black and South Asian workers from bus-crew jobs.…
• Reindeer antlers on an all-day danceEach September, dancers in England’s Abbots Bromley carry reindeer antlers around the parish. Six carry horns…
• A nine-year-old’s spelling reached printDaisy Ashford wrote a novella about English upper-class society when she was nine. Published in 1919, it pres…
• A successful penny service was taken overLondon’s Penny Post began in 1680, delivering within the city and nearby suburbs for a flat penny. Its succes…
• Their utopia still needed farming lessonsIn 1794, British poets Coleridge and Southey planned an egalitarian community in America. They imagined only…
• Before railway mania came canal maniaIn Britain in the 1790s, canal building attracted a rush of investment and new proposals. Successful waterway…
• Even barbers set up on the frozen ThamesAt London’s 1608 frost fair, stalls and tents occupied the frozen River Thames. Barbers, pubs, fruit sellers…
• Gin was encouraged, then repeatedly restrictedIn early eighteenth-century Britain, especially London, gin consumption rose rapidly. Policies encouraging do…
• A machine for stockings dates to 1589William Lee invented the stocking frame in England in 1589. It imitated hand-knitting movements. Early versio…
• Some schools marked children for speaking WelshMainly in the nineteenth century, some Welsh schools used a token, often wooden, to mark children heard speak…
• Even fire and furs could not stop her shiveringEurope suffered an exceptionally cold winter in 1708–1709. The Duchess of Orléans described shivering and bar…
• An experimental railway used tunnel air in 1864An experimental railway operated in London’s Crystal Palace Park in 1864. A large bristle collar around the c…
• A family carer became a collector of fishMary Kingsley cared for her family and read books in her father’s library. After her parents died, she travel…
• A fleet bound for the Far East fired on British fishermenDuring the Russo-Japanese War in October 1904, a Russian fleet heading east mistook British fishing trawlers…
• Defoe reported windmills catching fire in fierce windA major storm struck England and nearby areas in 1703. Daniel Defoe published an account the following year.…
• A harbour celebration ended in a disturbanceIn 1809, a feast marked completion of Bristol’s harbour works, with about a thousand workers invited. Roast o…
• After a forgery conviction, he sold openly labelled imitationsIn 1985, John Myatt advertised paintings that imitated famous artists while openly describing them as copies.…
• The Forty Elephants were a women’s theft gangIn late nineteenth- and twentieth-century London, a women’s crime group was known as the Forty Elephants. It…
• Protest letters carried the name of a fictional leaderDuring the Swing Riots of 1830, agricultural workers in England protested low wages, harsh conditions and mac…
• News of an approaching revolutionary force was falseIn June 1817, an armed rising took place around Pentrich in England. A report that a revolutionary force was…
• A Victorian cook proposed freezing ice cream with liquid nitrogenBritish cookery entrepreneur Agnes Marshall was known for frozen desserts and ran a school, wrote books and p…
• Theatre protesters brought in a coffin for higher pricesWhen London’s rebuilt Covent Garden theatre raised some admission prices in 1809, patrons protested during pe…
• A town ceremony includes an Orange Man in the processionAt Hocktide in Hungerford, England, ceremonial Tutti Men visit properties around town. They carry poles decor…
• Padstow’s festival horses wear masks and black capesAt Padstow’s May Day festival in Cornwall, costumed hobby horses dance through town to drums and accordions.…
• A ten-year-old recalled a classroom film on a Thai beachDuring a family holiday in Phuket in 2004, British schoolgirl Tilly Smith noticed unusual behaviour in the se…
• Textile protesters signed letters with the name of Ned LuddThe Luddite movement spread in England from 1811. Textile workers protested pay, working conditions and the u…
• A researcher compared a supposed new water with his sweatPolywater attracted attention in the 1960s as a proposed new form of water with unusual properties, including…
• About a third of the authorised railways were never builtRailway shares became a British investment craze in the 1840s. In 1846 Parliament passed 263 acts to establis…
• London crowds once chased a captured stag on a holidayNineteenth-century London tradespeople and workers gathered in Epping Forest on Easter Monday. A previously c…
• Clipped silver coins helped prompt England’s recoinageBy the late seventeenth century, older English silver coins had lost metal through clipped edges. Machine-str…
• A crowd awaiting a balloon flight destroyed the balloonAt a public flight in Leicester on 11 July 1864, rumours challenged whether the balloon was the newest and la…
• Garibaldi biscuits acquired a less appetising aliasBritain’s Garibaldi biscuit is named for the Italian unification leader. Currants pressed between thin layers…
• This nineteenth-century service was more than hair washingIndian-born Dean Mahomed opened a vapour-bath and massage business in Brighton in 1814. Its shampooing involv…
• A small anemone can divide after forming two crownsStarlet sea anemones inhabit shallow brackish waters, often buried in sediment with their tentacles exposed.…