20 interesting facts about Great Britain

Every country in the world has its own tradition, unwritten rules and peculiarities. Great Britain is not an exception and here are 20 interesting facts you may not know about England.

1. England is 74 times smaller than the United States, 59 times smaller than Australia and 3 times smaller than Japan. However, England is 2.5 times more populous than Australia.

2. The highest temperature ever recorded in England was 38.5 degrees Celsius in Brogdale, Kent, on 10th August 2003. I personally find English summer very pleasant and temperatures around 25 degrees Celsius are on average in the summer months.

3. This is not an urban myth! British people consume more tea per capita than anybody else in the world - 2.5 times more than the Japanese and 22 times more than the Americans or French. The tea time in England is not anymore about the time itself (well known 5 pm), but having a tea means to refresh yourself, recharge the batteries during a day, have a break from the work, have a nice hot drink while being snugged in the front of TV... you name it.The tea time is important time in England.


4. In 1894, The Times newspapers estimated that by 1950,London would be 9 feet deep in horse manure. Well, this bleak prediction haven't come as true. Today, London is one of the capitals of the world, metropolitan city, centre of culture, business and politics.

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5. French was the official language of England for about 300 years, from 1066 till 1362. This first king of England who appears to have spoken no French at all was Henry IV, who broke with tradition at his coronation in 1399 by making the address from the throne in English, rather than in French as had been the custom for the past three centuries.
 

6. University of Oxford once had rules that specifically forbade students from bringing bows and arrows to class. 

7. It could be regarded an act of treason to place a stamp bearing the King or Queen's image upside-down. 

8. In 1811, one quarter of the female population were named Mary. Other popular female names in that time were Sarah, Fanny, Ann, Emily or Harriet. 

9. One of the England's quaintest traditional event is the cheese rolling competition in Brockworth, Gloucester. 

10. During World War I, British spies used semen as invisible ink. A diary entry belonging to a senior member of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) has revealed that during the First World War it was discovered that the bodily fluid could act as an effective invisible ink.

11. Queen Elizabeth II is related to Vlad the Impaler. Prince Charles can trace his lineage back through his great grandmother Queen Mary, the consort of George V, to Vlad IV, the half brother of the notorious ruler.Another link to the country originated with Princess Marie of Edinburgh, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who went on to marry King Ferdinand I of Romania and ruled Romania after the First World War. 

12. The world's first public street lightning with gas was installed in Pall Mall, London, in 1807. In 1812, The London and Westminster Gas  Light and Coke Company became the world's first gas company. 

13. The original London Bridge was shipped to Arizona. US customs labelled it as 'large antique'. On 18th April, 1968 the bridge was sold to Americans for £1,029,000.  London Bridge was dismantled piece by piece and reconstructed at Lake Havasu City, Arizona to form the centrepiece of an ‘English’ theme park, complete with Tudor period shopping mall.

14. At William the Conqueror's funeral, his corpse was too bloated to fit inside the coffin,and exploded when mourners tried to fit him in. It is pretty gruesome story, but true one. A group of bishops applied pressure on the king's abdomen to force the body downward (in the coffin) but it moved only inches; the lid still would not shut. Again they pushed, and the abdominal wall, already under intense internal pressure, burst. Pus and putrefaction drenched the king's death garb and seeped throughout the coffin. The stench so overpowered chapel mourners that, hands to noses, many raced for the doors. 

15. The name Big Ben does not refer to the clock, or the building, but actually the Great Bell of the clock. The nickname was applied first to the Great Bell; it may have been named after Sir Benjamin Hall, who oversaw the installation of the Great Bell, or after boxing's English Heavyweight Champion Benjamin Caunt.

16. There is nowhere in Britain that  is more than 74.5 miles from the sea. Another thing I love about UK! British coast is so beautiful and diverse that there is no place that you can find boring or unattractive.

17. The shortest war against Britain was with Zanzibar on 27th August 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes. The immediate cause of the war was the death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini on 25th August 1896 and the subsequent succession of Sultan Khalid bin Barghash. It is also the shortest war in world's history. 

18. There are over 300 languages spoken in England. According to 2011 census, the main 5 languages are English, Polish, Punjabi, Urdu and Bengali. 

19. Silbury Hill, in the English county of Wiltshire, is the largest prehistoric man-made chalk mound in Europe. It was built about 4750 years ago and it is 30 metres (98 ft) high. 

20. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament. It is only one example of 238 obsolete laws that are still active, but mostly complete forgotten. Well, I am not sure what will be the punishment in this case of breaking the law.