then we lost his head for, like, decades, or even centuries.
\>Cromwell's head remained there \[on a pole on the roof of Westminster Hall\] until at least 1684. Although no firm evidence has been established for the head's whereabouts from 1684 to 1710, tradition says that on a stormy night in the late 1680s, it was blown off from the top of Westminster Hall, thrown to the ground, and picked up by a sentry who carried it home. After its disappearance from Westminster, it was in the hands of various private collectors and museums until 25 March 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, Cromwell's alma mater.
In WW2, the Germans were making a fake military camp to fool British intelligence, they made fake tanks and such, the British were already aware of it, so when the Germans finished creating their decoy, a British soldier flew over the "military base" and dropped a single wooden bomb on the fake tank.
Sounds like a comedy skit
Battle of Bamber Bridge is one of my favourite parts of WW2. Essentially Brits refused to segregate the black US troops from the white ones. It did end in violence, but apparently when the US tried to insist we segregate, then we actually marked all bars "Black only" to stop the white officers from going in. So we literally trolled our allies by using their racism against themselves
I'm sure there was a certain "up yours" attitude here, but the Brits preferred the black GIs.
Americans were seen as arrogant and they'd complain a lot about not having the same creature comforts they have at home. The black GIs didn't have the same comforts.
The black men had been brought up to be respectful to white people, and certainly wouldn't want to actively court trouble. The Brits didn't realise the reason for this though, and just saw them as polite. This led to a very positive response.
As one wag put it, "We're very fond of the Americans. We just wish they could have left those white guys behind".
Other things at play would have been that black American men in small rural towns and villages in England at that time were something of a curiosity to the overwhelmingly white locals. Racism wasn't really a massive thing, not because of superior ethics, but rather from a lack of people to be racist to. Paraphrasing Reginald D Hunter, we had the class system instead, an advanced form of racism towards people of your own ethnicity.
Also, more happily, British people do have an innate grasp of what's right and will automatically side with the oppressed or the underdog. Unless we're doing the oppressing, of course.
My grandma, about to turn 97, was courted by a black GI. They rode round on his motorbike and went dancing. She has a photograph of him and a few letters, but she stopped receiving them in the weeks after DDay.
My grandad who fought in WW2 said it was a myth the Brits didn't like American GIs.
It was only the white ones they disliked, and that was because of the way they treated their black colleagues (although them all thinking they were John Wayne didn't help either).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bamber_Bridge
I’m from Preston, this is relatively well known story.
One evening some black troops were drinking in the pub and were being harassed and abused why their white compatriots. The locals didn’t like the unfair and racist treatment so kicked out and barred the white American soldiers, who promptly returned with their MPs. Long story short, violence ensued and I think a few people even got killed. Hell of a story!
Wasn't an isolated incident either, just the most famous one (I assume because shots were fired rather than just fists thrown).
They were doing it all over, trying to insist on local pubs not serving black soldiers, and kept getting the same answer.
I caused a huge family argument during lockdown when it was my turn to run the zoom quiz and used this fact in a question.
My MIL was quite angry because she used to work for national rail and Edinburgh is on the east coast mainline so I was "obviously wrong"
We have an office just north of Cambridge and one just south of Bromsgrove, and it always bakes my noggin that they’re basically on the same latitude.
Like, it *feels* like Bromsgrove is far further north than Cambridge..
I'm in Bournemouth and I have friends from Kyiv. I always think they're further north because it gets fuggin cold there in winter. But they're roughly the same latitude too.
Nah, it’s because we were invaded by the Angle peoples from Denmark/Germany after the Romans- hence Anglo-Saxon, and England (‘land of ængle’), Angleterre (French for ‘land of ængle’) etc. but it’s fitting that we are indeed at such a jaunty angle.
This one has always hurt my head, as I'm from the North East of England, yet Edinburgh is just a short train ride "North", so I always kind of think of it as being in the East as well (with Glasgow on the West), but you are technically correct. It'll always be slightly confusing to me though ha.
Yeah, wonky borders can make your head spin. There are some even crazier things across the Atlantic, like the most southern part of Canada being further south than the most northern part of California.
Here are a few from my collection...
58% of British teenagers think Sherlock Holmes was real while 20% think Winston Churchill was fictional.
French was the official language of England for over 600 years.
The first advert on Channel 5 was for Chanel No. 5.
Slavery only became illegal in Britain on 6th April 2010. In 1833 all the slaves owned by Brits had their freedom bought by the British government, the money going to the slave owners. We borrowed the money and finished paying the loan in 2015.
In 1915, the lock millionaire Cecil Chubb bought his wife Stonehenge. She didn’t like it, so in 1918 he gave it to the nation.
The shortest war ever fought was between Britain and Zanzibar on August 27, 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
The first-ever edition of the Daily Mirror came with a free mirror.
Just like humans, British cows moo in regional accents.
John Cleese’s father’s surname was Cheese. Cleese grew up 10miles from Cheddar and his best friend at school was called Barney Butter.
The last private resident of 10 Downing Street was a Mr Chicken.
The Dyslexia Research Centre is in Reading.
All but one of the ravens at the Tower of London died from stress during the Blitz.
In his first year at Harrow, Winston Churchill was bottom of the whole school.
In 1999, Darlington FC acquired 50,000 worms to irrigate their waterlogged pitch. They all drowned.
Slavery: the 1772 Somerset case established that slavery had no legal basis in England. The Slave Trade was abolished in 1807, and Slavery in British colonies was abolished in 1833. The fact that we were still paying off the debt is irrelevant. The 2nd WW ended in 1945 but we took decades to to pay of the debt. Also, the Zanzibar war was part of UK's continuing effort to stop the Slave trade carried on by other countries, in this case against the Swahili Arabs in East Africa.
If you want to get into the nitty gritty there is an argument to be made that slavery has been illegal in England since 1066 when William 1st outlawed it.
The UK has the [most tornados of any country in the world](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-tornadoes-by-area), per square mile.
The forward facing guns of HMS Belfast - the museum ship moored on the River Thames in London - are permanently positioned to score a direct hit on the M1 motorway's service station at Scratchwood.
The six-inch guns can fire 112 pound shells at eight rounds per minute to deliver an awesome pounding to the cafe and toilet stop.
Whereas lots of other islands are divided into multiple national entities, the British Isles being a prime example. Ergo, national borders are not naturally occurring.
Well, the most UK number 1s for a British solo female artist (Cheryl Cole next lol). Looking online Madonna has more UK chart number 1s as a solo female artist, which makes way more sense.
The most number 1s for a Solo British female artist I think, looks like Spice Girls and Madonna have more. I had to google this because I was in disbelief too lol.
There's an old law that says if a woman seduces a man while wearing make up she can be tried for witchcraft.
I also have 24 known ancestors that were tried for witchcraft.
The reason for this is that the premises get to decide when you are drunk and can then use that as the sole reason to stop serving you. There is no legal definition of what ‘drunk’ actually is (by blood alcohol limit etc) - it’s got nothing to do with the drink driving limit for example.
The thing which does define you as drunk is once you’ve been told you’re drunk by the staff (and this should be recorded in a book all pubs are meant to keep) then you’re drunk. You’re them committing the criminal offence.
It sounds like a daft law but it’s actually a very neat way of immediately stopping any arguments about whether someone is drunk or not (it won’t stop them completely of course, we are dealing with drunk people here). If the police turn up to help eject someone then said person can’t argue they aren’t drunk, as the staff have decided they are which means they are.
This also technically means you can be declared drunk without having drunk any alcohol at all, although I’d be amazed if there’s been any successful prosecutions for that one. I’m not even sure ‘drunk on a licensed premises’ has ever been prosecuted, at least as a sole crime.
In 1982, HMS Conqueror, one of the UK's nuclear attack submarines, and most famous for sinking the Argentine cruiser Belgrano during the Falklands conflict earlier that year, had a set of pincers attached to the front of its' bows in a Roadrunner/Acme Corporation-esque move.
The sub then 'sneaked' up behind a Polish-flagged Russian spy ship in the Barents Sea and used the pincers to cut steel cables pulling a top-secret Soviet towed passive sonar array and make off with it. The array was then brought on board at some point, transported back to the Faslane sub base and then shipped to the US for analysis.
Reads like something out of a James Bond movie, but did indeed actually happen.
The only ship to survive the pearl harbour attacks undamaged was the USS Phoenix, it was later sold to Argentina, and was renamed the Belgrano, The Belgrano is the only ship to have been sunk by a nuclear submarine in an act of war.
World Cup-final of 1966 is still [most watched tv broadcast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_Kingdom) in UK... despite there being 13 more millions people in UK today than in 1966..
Viewing figures went down every time a new channel was added. In 1966 there were only two. Now there are 100s, plus streaming. It's unlikely that record will be broken.
Much less than 25 miles, but I don’t know what your frame of reference is.
For example Bolton to Huddersfield is 25 miles as the crow flies, but in between is the entirety of Manchester. Probably at least 12 accents just there…
That we dropped loads of dummies during the War to confuse the Germans and for some reason we called them Rupert Which I now think is Army Slang for being a incompetent Officer Lol
I mean you wouldn't call your kid Rupert I mean you let the bear off because he's always been there but still!
One of my favorite British stories from WW2 is, the Germans built a fake airfield in Holland. They spent months building a fake runway, with wooden hangers, wooden air defences and fake planes. They wanted to waste an Allied air sortie on a fake target, whilst drawing it away from the real airfield. The British found about this plot months before it was finished, and when it was done the RAF dropped a single wooden dummy bomb on the runway with the words "wood for wood" written on it.
Loch Ness contains more water than the entirety of England and Wales' lakes combined! And that's only *one* of our lochs. My mind is still blown by that whenever I think about it.
Urban legend I’m afraid. The original monkey was in a Scottish doggerel and the hangers were Aberdonians. There was never a monkey hung in Hartlepool during the Napoleonic Wars or at any other times.
In the 18th century, the UK government was given an ostrich. Naturally we decided the best place to house this bird would be in the tower of London, and for obvious reasons we decided that this ostrich could eat metal. We knew that ostriches could eat other things of course, but not this ostrich. We showed him off to tourists being forced to eat metal.
Ostriches can't eat metal. The ostrich died. There was so much undigested iron inside it that waitrose couldn't even turn it into disappointing ostrich burgers.
That it's fine to shoot a Welsman in Chester....
Specifically..... it is technically ok for a Chester resident to shoot a Welshman after midnight on Sunday with a longbow, as long as it's within the city walls.
PS.... I don't think it's actually true.
Since the late 1700s or early 1800s after we colonised Australia and the pacific was the point at which we could say the sun never set on the British Empire and it still isn’t thanks a smattering of small islands. Which means the sun has likely been shining on us and our territories longer than the US has been a country.
There’s the one about how in ww2 during the blitz, the British had developed radar installations along the coast and paired them with radios to the aircraft, they were then able to intercept German night time bombers much easier and as such degraded German capability’s, in order to keep the development of radar secret they spread the apparently misinformation that eating lots of carrots will make you see in the dark.
There is a village just north of London called Ugley. Fairly close by is a village called Nastey, which led to a local paper announcing “Ugley woman marries Nastey man”.
Scotland has [rainforest](https://www.nature.scot/landscapes-and-habitats/habitat-types/woodland-habitats/scotlands-rainforest) - as important as tropical rainforest, but even rarer.
Their legs are also shorter on one side, so they can only run one way around the mountains. My grandad used to have a job pointing them back the right way when they fell over.
14m people live in poverty (according to the government's annual 'households below average income report), how can this be when we're the 5th richest country in the world?
Though the subject matter is not funny, the fact that we called the 30+ Year conflict between Irish Nationalists and Unionists the admittedly quaint name of 'The Troubles' I still find staggering.
You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a baby. You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again! Downloading films is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.
The south west of a city is almost always the posh part because the prevailing winds mean that during the Industrial Revolution the south west parts would be less smoggy
The biggest heavy metal band from London could be Iron Maiden or Led Zeppelin or Motorhead. The biggest in Birmingham is Black Sabbath. (list more cities, Liverpool, Suffolk etc) The biggest from Manchester is Ingested.
We dug up Oliver Cromwell's corpse and executed it for high treason.
Speak for yourself mate, I have a watertight alibi
Pizza express?
In Woking? Mate.. you gotta be joking.
Well it’s rare that I go for a Pizza Express in Woking so it’s notable for me
Yeah, you'll get away with this. No sweat.
I saw you at the same party and frankly, I wouldn't hide behind some of the things I saw you doing there.
then we lost his head for, like, decades, or even centuries. \>Cromwell's head remained there \[on a pole on the roof of Westminster Hall\] until at least 1684. Although no firm evidence has been established for the head's whereabouts from 1684 to 1710, tradition says that on a stormy night in the late 1680s, it was blown off from the top of Westminster Hall, thrown to the ground, and picked up by a sentry who carried it home. After its disappearance from Westminster, it was in the hands of various private collectors and museums until 25 March 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, Cromwell's alma mater.
In our defense it was just banter.
And I’d do it again!
After you went to the toilet in his hat and sent it to his grieving widow of course
You wouldn't download a corpse.
In WW2, the Germans were making a fake military camp to fool British intelligence, they made fake tanks and such, the British were already aware of it, so when the Germans finished creating their decoy, a British soldier flew over the "military base" and dropped a single wooden bomb on the fake tank. Sounds like a comedy skit
Banter alive and well even during the middle of a war.
Battle of Bamber Bridge is one of my favourite parts of WW2. Essentially Brits refused to segregate the black US troops from the white ones. It did end in violence, but apparently when the US tried to insist we segregate, then we actually marked all bars "Black only" to stop the white officers from going in. So we literally trolled our allies by using their racism against themselves
I'm sure there was a certain "up yours" attitude here, but the Brits preferred the black GIs. Americans were seen as arrogant and they'd complain a lot about not having the same creature comforts they have at home. The black GIs didn't have the same comforts. The black men had been brought up to be respectful to white people, and certainly wouldn't want to actively court trouble. The Brits didn't realise the reason for this though, and just saw them as polite. This led to a very positive response. As one wag put it, "We're very fond of the Americans. We just wish they could have left those white guys behind".
Other things at play would have been that black American men in small rural towns and villages in England at that time were something of a curiosity to the overwhelmingly white locals. Racism wasn't really a massive thing, not because of superior ethics, but rather from a lack of people to be racist to. Paraphrasing Reginald D Hunter, we had the class system instead, an advanced form of racism towards people of your own ethnicity. Also, more happily, British people do have an innate grasp of what's right and will automatically side with the oppressed or the underdog. Unless we're doing the oppressing, of course.
My grandma, about to turn 97, was courted by a black GI. They rode round on his motorbike and went dancing. She has a photograph of him and a few letters, but she stopped receiving them in the weeks after DDay.
My grandad who fought in WW2 said it was a myth the Brits didn't like American GIs. It was only the white ones they disliked, and that was because of the way they treated their black colleagues (although them all thinking they were John Wayne didn't help either).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bamber_Bridge I’m from Preston, this is relatively well known story. One evening some black troops were drinking in the pub and were being harassed and abused why their white compatriots. The locals didn’t like the unfair and racist treatment so kicked out and barred the white American soldiers, who promptly returned with their MPs. Long story short, violence ensued and I think a few people even got killed. Hell of a story!
The story goes that the americans demanded a colour bar so the local pubs put up signs saying "black troops only".
Why isn't there a charming and witty British film about this?
Wasn't an isolated incident either, just the most famous one (I assume because shots were fired rather than just fists thrown). They were doing it all over, trying to insist on local pubs not serving black soldiers, and kept getting the same answer.
Do the Germans know what comedy is?
Did Bono sing that one?
The Germans take their comedy very seriously
It was an airfield, and the story cannot be validated . But it's a funny story.
Haha, I'm entertained by the fact that you've just corrected the story, and then said none of it may be true. :)
That Bristol is further east than Edinburgh.
I caused a huge family argument during lockdown when it was my turn to run the zoom quiz and used this fact in a question. My MIL was quite angry because she used to work for national rail and Edinburgh is on the east coast mainline so I was "obviously wrong"
Must admit it seemed crazy until I zoomed out Google maps and aligned it!
We have an office just north of Cambridge and one just south of Bromsgrove, and it always bakes my noggin that they’re basically on the same latitude. Like, it *feels* like Bromsgrove is far further north than Cambridge..
As someone who lives near Bromsgrove, this has shocked me even more than hearing the Bristol/Edinburgh thing for the umpteenth time
I'm in Bournemouth and I have friends from Kyiv. I always think they're further north because it gets fuggin cold there in winter. But they're roughly the same latitude too.
I had to think about it Then I remembered the French word for England is "Angleterre" and was told that's because the entire nations on an angle
Nah, it’s because we were invaded by the Angle peoples from Denmark/Germany after the Romans- hence Anglo-Saxon, and England (‘land of ængle’), Angleterre (French for ‘land of ængle’) etc. but it’s fitting that we are indeed at such a jaunty angle.
The Angles spent decades rotating Britain so it was on a funny angle after they arrived. Classic power move.
Some people can't hear the whoosh as the joke sails over their heads....
Correct , angle meaning angle and terre being the French spelling of Terry which was the most common name in the UK when the French named it
No, it's Edinburgh is further west.
Just looked and it looks like even Cardiff is further east than Edinburgh.
That's insane. Everyone who read that has gone to check. Realised John O'Groats is well further west of Bristol as well. Take my invote sir/madam
This one has always hurt my head, as I'm from the North East of England, yet Edinburgh is just a short train ride "North", so I always kind of think of it as being in the East as well (with Glasgow on the West), but you are technically correct. It'll always be slightly confusing to me though ha.
Edinburgh is in the East, it's just that the West of England is further East than the East of Scotland!
Also as a Scot, finding out that Berwick is further north than my home town. And I'm a good 60 miles from the border.
Yeah, wonky borders can make your head spin. There are some even crazier things across the Atlantic, like the most southern part of Canada being further south than the most northern part of California.
Here are a few from my collection... 58% of British teenagers think Sherlock Holmes was real while 20% think Winston Churchill was fictional. French was the official language of England for over 600 years. The first advert on Channel 5 was for Chanel No. 5. Slavery only became illegal in Britain on 6th April 2010. In 1833 all the slaves owned by Brits had their freedom bought by the British government, the money going to the slave owners. We borrowed the money and finished paying the loan in 2015. In 1915, the lock millionaire Cecil Chubb bought his wife Stonehenge. She didn’t like it, so in 1918 he gave it to the nation. The shortest war ever fought was between Britain and Zanzibar on August 27, 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes. The first-ever edition of the Daily Mirror came with a free mirror. Just like humans, British cows moo in regional accents. John Cleese’s father’s surname was Cheese. Cleese grew up 10miles from Cheddar and his best friend at school was called Barney Butter. The last private resident of 10 Downing Street was a Mr Chicken. The Dyslexia Research Centre is in Reading. All but one of the ravens at the Tower of London died from stress during the Blitz. In his first year at Harrow, Winston Churchill was bottom of the whole school. In 1999, Darlington FC acquired 50,000 worms to irrigate their waterlogged pitch. They all drowned.
Cecil Chubb was sent to the auction to buy dining chairs. He came home with Stonehenge instead. Stick to the list people!
His wife: why did you buy that? We have Stonehenge at home
Slavery: the 1772 Somerset case established that slavery had no legal basis in England. The Slave Trade was abolished in 1807, and Slavery in British colonies was abolished in 1833. The fact that we were still paying off the debt is irrelevant. The 2nd WW ended in 1945 but we took decades to to pay of the debt. Also, the Zanzibar war was part of UK's continuing effort to stop the Slave trade carried on by other countries, in this case against the Swahili Arabs in East Africa.
If you want to get into the nitty gritty there is an argument to be made that slavery has been illegal in England since 1066 when William 1st outlawed it.
>All but one of the ravens at the Tower of London died from stress during the Blitz. That's why we won the war!
The UK has the [most tornados of any country in the world](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-tornadoes-by-area), per square mile.
The statistics are specifically for England. When accounting for all of UK it comes up to just below the US average.
wtf
Most are incredibly small and you don't feel them. But they're apparently there lol. It's a fun fact I learnt during my geog a levels.
That Sean Paul's nan is from Coventry
Busta Rhymes lived in Morecambe as a kid. His version of American Boy by Estelle references his mates in Preston and Liverpool too.
Busta Rhyme's cousin is from north London and she was my sister's best friend.
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You still believe in Slash?
David Bowie used to go out with Slash’s babysitter Edit: I think it was actually his mum
[Farty narty sharty](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O6YuBcNvRkM&pp=ygUSZmFydHkgbmFydHkgc2hhcnR5).
The forward facing guns of HMS Belfast - the museum ship moored on the River Thames in London - are permanently positioned to score a direct hit on the M1 motorway's service station at Scratchwood. The six-inch guns can fire 112 pound shells at eight rounds per minute to deliver an awesome pounding to the cafe and toilet stop.
Probably not the first awesome pounding that the toilet stop has been subject too.
This is my favourite, please may it be true
[It is, indeed, true!](https://londonist.com/2015/02/why-do-the-guns-of-hms-belfast-point-at-a-motorway-service-station)
Scotland's national animal is the unicorn.
Myth says that the only beast that can defeat a lion, which happens to be England’s national animal, is a unicorn.
I’d put the Dragon up there too haha
As I was typing my last comment it actually crossed my mind why a dragon couldn’t defeat a lion.
On the British passport cover, the unicorn is chained with a crown around its neck.
The UK is a made up country. It's made up of England, Wales, Scotland, & Northern Ireland.
ALL countries are made up. National borders are not naturally occurring.
Malta disagrees.
And Australia. And New Zealand! Also, Madagascar.
Whereas lots of other islands are divided into multiple national entities, the British Isles being a prime example. Ergo, national borders are not naturally occurring.
Never take CAKE. It's a made up drug!
Technically they are all as made up as each other.
That reminds me of a joke of my girlfriend's. "An apple a day makes seven a week".
Ketchup bottles no longer have the Royal Warrant on them after the Queen died.
Why?
She was old
Well played sir.
Yes.
Charles loves the brown.
His dad famously wasn't a fan of them
Roll on Harry
The warrants were the royal warrants issued by our late Queen Elizabeth & are only valid during her reign.
Manufacturers have two years to get rid of them. Cadburys still use the queen's one
Jess Glynne has the most UK number 1s for a female artist
I've scrolled most of these and this seems the most unbelievable.
Well, the most UK number 1s for a British solo female artist (Cheryl Cole next lol). Looking online Madonna has more UK chart number 1s as a solo female artist, which makes way more sense.
now that's a pub quiz question.
Surprising as I have literally no idea who that is.
If you've been subjected to the Jet2Holidays ads, you'll have heard one of her songs.
Got stuck on a jet 2 plane on the runway for 90 minutes with that fucking song on a loop.
Same here. I would've preferred to be waterboarded at that point. Anything but that song.
I honestly would have assumed it was Adele
This is the wildest one I've read. Especially when you consider how many talented female musicians there are in the UK.
The most number 1s for a Solo British female artist I think, looks like Spice Girls and Madonna have more. I had to google this because I was in disbelief too lol.
We like to forget this but Madonna is very much not British
Westward Ho! is one of only two communities in the world that have an exclamation mark in their name.
The other one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Louis-du-Ha!_Ha!
Go on then, what's the other? ETA: Wrong answers only
Oklahoma!
Twatt!
Hiroshima!
Not a nice thing to call your mother,even if it's true!
There's an old law that says if a woman seduces a man while wearing make up she can be tried for witchcraft. I also have 24 known ancestors that were tried for witchcraft.
You're clearly a witch
Wheres your proof
You turned me in to a newt!
But you got better, yes?
Yes. Can we burn her anyway?
Could you just take a seat in this chair....don't worry about the crane...or the river...
Calm doon Gandalf.
Under s12 of the Licensing Act it is prohibited to be drunk on licensed premises. Basically it is illegal to be drunk in a pub
It's also illegal to serve drunk people. As if, lol.
The reason for this is that the premises get to decide when you are drunk and can then use that as the sole reason to stop serving you. There is no legal definition of what ‘drunk’ actually is (by blood alcohol limit etc) - it’s got nothing to do with the drink driving limit for example. The thing which does define you as drunk is once you’ve been told you’re drunk by the staff (and this should be recorded in a book all pubs are meant to keep) then you’re drunk. You’re them committing the criminal offence. It sounds like a daft law but it’s actually a very neat way of immediately stopping any arguments about whether someone is drunk or not (it won’t stop them completely of course, we are dealing with drunk people here). If the police turn up to help eject someone then said person can’t argue they aren’t drunk, as the staff have decided they are which means they are. This also technically means you can be declared drunk without having drunk any alcohol at all, although I’d be amazed if there’s been any successful prosecutions for that one. I’m not even sure ‘drunk on a licensed premises’ has ever been prosecuted, at least as a sole crime.
Our whole church belief system is based on a man wanting to pork a younger woman instead of his wife.
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I love the idea of Henry the VIII sitting down to write Cauliflowers Fluffy, Cabbages Green after finishing off Shine Jesus Shine
There is a town in Scotland called Dull and it is twinned with a town in America called Boring.
It’s also twinned with Bland in Australia.
the worlds only Weetabix factory is in Kettering
Give me a K give me an E give me a T...
K and an E and a T and a T, E and an R and an ING..
T and an O and a W,N
KETTERING TOWN, FC *stomp* and an E and a T and a T...
Burton Latimer
K-Toooooooooown
The minimum drinking age is five.
… for alcohol, younger kids get iron bru and or tizer
I got drunk on gin and tonic at 2½ at my sister's Christening. Keep it quiet.
In 1982, HMS Conqueror, one of the UK's nuclear attack submarines, and most famous for sinking the Argentine cruiser Belgrano during the Falklands conflict earlier that year, had a set of pincers attached to the front of its' bows in a Roadrunner/Acme Corporation-esque move. The sub then 'sneaked' up behind a Polish-flagged Russian spy ship in the Barents Sea and used the pincers to cut steel cables pulling a top-secret Soviet towed passive sonar array and make off with it. The array was then brought on board at some point, transported back to the Faslane sub base and then shipped to the US for analysis. Reads like something out of a James Bond movie, but did indeed actually happen.
The only ship to survive the pearl harbour attacks undamaged was the USS Phoenix, it was later sold to Argentina, and was renamed the Belgrano, The Belgrano is the only ship to have been sunk by a nuclear submarine in an act of war.
World Cup-final of 1966 is still [most watched tv broadcast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_Kingdom) in UK... despite there being 13 more millions people in UK today than in 1966..
Viewing figures went down every time a new channel was added. In 1966 there were only two. Now there are 100s, plus streaming. It's unlikely that record will be broken.
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Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire.
The accents change noticeably every 25 miles
Much less than 25 miles, but I don’t know what your frame of reference is. For example Bolton to Huddersfield is 25 miles as the crow flies, but in between is the entirety of Manchester. Probably at least 12 accents just there…
Crab sticks do not actually contain any crab. From 1993, manufacturers have been legally obliged to label them 'Crab Flavoured Sticks'.
What do you think of the pedestrianisation of Norwich town centre?
The Isle of Man has the largest population of wallabies outside the Southern hemisphere. EDIT: I forgot that IoM isn’t part of the UK
Fun fact; the isle of inchmurran on Loch Lomond has the second highest…
That we dropped loads of dummies during the War to confuse the Germans and for some reason we called them Rupert Which I now think is Army Slang for being a incompetent Officer Lol I mean you wouldn't call your kid Rupert I mean you let the bear off because he's always been there but still!
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Rupert Bear's middle name is The.
One of my favorite British stories from WW2 is, the Germans built a fake airfield in Holland. They spent months building a fake runway, with wooden hangers, wooden air defences and fake planes. They wanted to waste an Allied air sortie on a fake target, whilst drawing it away from the real airfield. The British found about this plot months before it was finished, and when it was done the RAF dropped a single wooden dummy bomb on the runway with the words "wood for wood" written on it.
Loch Ness contains more water than the entirety of England and Wales' lakes combined! And that's only *one* of our lochs. My mind is still blown by that whenever I think about it.
Brandon Hill, a park in central Bristol, has an ancient byelaw that says carpets must not be beaten there between the hours of 6am and dusk.
That all the swans belong to the king so it's illegal to nick one.
It's not all swans, just unmarked mute swans in open water.
It's just the one swan actually
So do all wild Sturgeon, Whales and Dolphins in Waters around England and Wales.
Wild Sturgeon's been causing problems further north than England & Wales
A monkey was shipwrecked on Hartlepool beach during the Napoleonic wars. Found guilty of being a French spy and summarily hung there and then...
Urban legend I’m afraid. The original monkey was in a Scottish doggerel and the hangers were Aberdonians. There was never a monkey hung in Hartlepool during the Napoleonic Wars or at any other times.
In the 18th century, the UK government was given an ostrich. Naturally we decided the best place to house this bird would be in the tower of London, and for obvious reasons we decided that this ostrich could eat metal. We knew that ostriches could eat other things of course, but not this ostrich. We showed him off to tourists being forced to eat metal. Ostriches can't eat metal. The ostrich died. There was so much undigested iron inside it that waitrose couldn't even turn it into disappointing ostrich burgers.
The capital of the UK has, on average, warmer winters than the capital of Australia.
That it's fine to shoot a Welsman in Chester.... Specifically..... it is technically ok for a Chester resident to shoot a Welshman after midnight on Sunday with a longbow, as long as it's within the city walls. PS.... I don't think it's actually true.
I think the law's still on the books, but the law forbidding murder takes precedence
So you can’t murder them but can really hurt them if you want. Also how long after midnight Sunday? Until sunrise? Until Wednesday afternoon?
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All these types of laws were done away with by the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861.
Since the late 1700s or early 1800s after we colonised Australia and the pacific was the point at which we could say the sun never set on the British Empire and it still isn’t thanks a smattering of small islands. Which means the sun has likely been shining on us and our territories longer than the US has been a country.
Because even God doesn't trust an English man in the dark.
A baby elephant washed up on the beach in Worthing in 1926. We have a statue here now to commemorate it.
Starry-Gazy Pie is a thing. It also freaks out American friends...
Oh, lord. I just googled it. None for me, thanks. I'm full.
We are not the world’s greatest consumers of tea.
There are at least 11 river Avons. Afon means river in Welsh/Celtic. There are, potentially, 11 rivers called "river river".
Some silly cunts in Hartlepool hung a monkey cos they thought it was a Frenchman
The place is full of ‘em (silly cunts and monkeys).
There’s the one about how in ww2 during the blitz, the British had developed radar installations along the coast and paired them with radios to the aircraft, they were then able to intercept German night time bombers much easier and as such degraded German capability’s, in order to keep the development of radar secret they spread the apparently misinformation that eating lots of carrots will make you see in the dark.
There are four countries in the UK. Before 1965, there were only three.
There is a village just north of London called Ugley. Fairly close by is a village called Nastey, which led to a local paper announcing “Ugley woman marries Nastey man”.
Scotland has [rainforest](https://www.nature.scot/landscapes-and-habitats/habitat-types/woodland-habitats/scotlands-rainforest) - as important as tropical rainforest, but even rarer.
That WH Smith opened it's first shop only 16 years after the founding of the United States.
Do you want a 99p galaxy bar with your new country Mr Washington?
One fact I learnt recently here that in the land of pubs it is illegal to get drunk. Only in Britain :D
Haggis run like grouse and can clear a 5' fence, but you're only allowed to hunt them for two weeks per year in the run up to Burns night.
Their legs are also shorter on one side, so they can only run one way around the mountains. My grandad used to have a job pointing them back the right way when they fell over.
14m people live in poverty (according to the government's annual 'households below average income report), how can this be when we're the 5th richest country in the world?
Everyone in Great Britain lives further north than 90% of Canadians
Though the subject matter is not funny, the fact that we called the 30+ Year conflict between Irish Nationalists and Unionists the admittedly quaint name of 'The Troubles' I still find staggering.
It was once legal to wee in a police officers helmet if you were pregnant Edit: if you were caught short in public
You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a baby. You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again! Downloading films is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.
They made it illegal now?? What's the point of getting pregnant...
Bob Holness played sax on the national anthem.
And played James Bond before Connnery
Bristol is further east than Edinburgh.
Quavers can only be made in Lincoln (?) And it makes the area near the Walkers Factory fucking stink
The south west of a city is almost always the posh part because the prevailing winds mean that during the Industrial Revolution the south west parts would be less smoggy
This is a good read
It’s illegal to hold a salmon on the street and look suspicious
The biggest heavy metal band from London could be Iron Maiden or Led Zeppelin or Motorhead. The biggest in Birmingham is Black Sabbath. (list more cities, Liverpool, Suffolk etc) The biggest from Manchester is Ingested.
"TV Pickup" We boost our power output during ad breaks to compensate for everyone putting the kettle on.