117 Fun Facts About British History

Long after Julius Caesar's raids, which Roman emperor launched the conquest of Britain in AD 43?

Claudius crossed the Channel himself for just sixteen days, long enough to see Colchester taken, then went home to celebrate a triumph in Rome.

Boudica, who led a revolt against Rome around AD 60, was queen of which tribe?

The Iceni. Tacitus says the revolt began after Roman officials had Boudica flogged and her daughters raped; her army burned Colchester, London and St Albans before the governor Suetonius Paulinus crushed it.

Which Roman emperor ordered a 73-mile wall built across northern Britain?

Hadrian's Wall was soon leapfrogged: his successor built a turf wall across central Scotland, but it was abandoned within a generation and the garrisons marched back to the stone one.

In AD 410, Emperor Honorius reportedly told Britain's cities to see to their own what?

Defence: Honorius was fighting to hold Italy, where Goths sacked Rome itself that same year, and had no troops to spare for a distant island.

The 793 raid marking the start of the Viking Age in Britain hit which Northumbrian monastery?

Lindisfarne. The 793 sack of Lindisfarne's monastery, on a tidal island off Northumberland, shocked Christian Europe; the monks later fled with St Cuthbert's body, which came to rest in Durham Cathedral.

At which 878 battle did Alfred the Great decisively defeat Guthrum's Viking army?

Edington. Months earlier a surprise attack had driven Alfred into hiding in the Somerset marshes; his comeback victory forced Guthrum to accept baptism and leave Wessex.

Which Suffolk site yielded a great Anglo-Saxon ship burial in 1939?

Sutton Hoo's iron helmet came out of the ground in hundreds of rusted fragments; British Museum conservators pieced it together twice, redoing the work after flaws were found in the first attempt.

Which Danish king ruled England, Denmark and Norway in what historians call the North Sea Empire?

Cnut. Cnut ruled England from 1016, Denmark from 1018 and Norway from 1028; the tale of him commanding the tide was first told to show his humility before God, not his arrogance.

Less than three weeks before Hastings in 1066, Harold Godwinson crushed a Norwegian invasion at which Yorkshire battle?

Stamford Bridge. Harold marched his army some 180 miles north in four days to catch the invaders by surprise, then had to hurry back south to face the Normans at Hastings.

How is Harold II traditionally said to have died at Hastings?

An arrow to the eye is what the Bayeux Tapestry seems to show, and later chroniclers repeat it, but another early account has Norman knights hack him down instead.

Despite its name, the Bayeux Tapestry is technically what kind of artwork?

An embroidered cloth, stitched in wool thread on linen, not woven; Napoleon had it displayed in Paris as propaganda while he was planning his own invasion of England.

Which Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered in his own cathedral in December 1170?

Thomas Becket. Four knights killed him in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170, believing Henry II wanted him gone; his shrine there became a great pilgrimage site, the destination in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

King John sealed Magna Carta in June 1215 at which spot beside the Thames?

Runnymede is a riverside meadow near Windsor; within months John had the pope declare the charter invalid and civil war followed, and only four copies of the 1215 text survive.

At which 1314 battle did Robert the Bruce defeat Edward II's English army?

Bannockburn. Bruce's victory secured his hold on the Scottish throne, though England did not formally recognise Scottish independence until the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328.

A chronicle records the Black Death reaching England in 1348 at Melcombe, now part of which Dorset port?

Weymouth. A friars' chronicle says a sailor aboard a ship from Gascony carried the plague ashore at Melcombe shortly before midsummer 1348, making its townsfolk the first in England to be infected.

Which rebel leader was struck down by London's mayor at Smithfield, ending the Peasants' Revolt of 1381?

Wat Tyler's rebels were furious at a poll tax of a shilling a head, triple the earlier rate; when he fell, the 14-year-old Richard II rode forward and talked the crowd into dispersing.

Henry V's archers routed the French at Agincourt in 1415 on which saint's feast day?

St Crispin's Day, 25 October: overnight rain had turned the freshly ploughed field to mud that bogged down the armoured French, and Shakespeare later gave Henry his 'band of brothers' speech for the day.

In the Wars of the Roses, which side is traditionally given the red rose as its badge?

House of Lancaster. The red rose was probably little used while the fighting lasted; Henry VII, the Lancastrian claimant, joined it to York's white as the Tudor rose after marrying Elizabeth of York.

Richard III, killed at Bosworth in 1485, was found in 2012 buried under what in Leicester?

A car park. Archaeologists found the bones within days of starting to dig up the Leicester council car park; DNA from a living descendant of Richard's sister confirmed it was the king.

What did workmen find buried under a staircase in the Tower of London in 1674?

Two small skeletons. Charles II had the children's bones placed in Westminster Abbey as the lost princes, Edward V and his brother, though that identification has never been proven.

Which wife bore Henry VIII's son Edward?

Jane Seymour died twelve days after the birth in October 1537; of all his wives she was the one Henry chose to be buried beside, at Windsor.

What title did Parliament confirm for Henry VIII in 1534 after his break with Rome?

Supreme Head of the Church of England. The 1534 Act of Supremacy made the title law; a pope had earlier named Henry Defender of the Faith for writing against Luther.

Which king was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots?

James I, already James VI of Scotland, later had his mother's body moved from Peterborough to Westminster Abbey, where he built her a magnificent marble tomb.

Which Spanish king sent the Armada against England in 1588?

Philip II had once been England's king consort, as the husband of Mary I; English fireships broke up his fleet's formation, and storms wrecked many of its ships on the long way home.

Where did Elizabeth I deliver her famous speech to the troops in August 1588?

Tilbury. Elizabeth addressed the army camped at Tilbury in Essex on 9 August 1588, declaring she had 'the heart and stomach of a king'; by then the Armada had already been driven off.

What tipped off the authorities to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605?

An anonymous letter warned the Catholic peer Lord Monteagle to stay away from Parliament; he took it straight to the government, and a search found Fawkes guarding the gunpowder beneath the House of Lords.

Which tax did Charles I levy without Parliament, provoking John Hampden's refusal to pay?

Ship Money had been a levy on coastal areas to fund the navy; Charles demanded it from inland counties in peacetime, and seven of the twelve judges ruled against Hampden.

Charles I was executed in January 1649 outside which London building?

The Banqueting House, Whitehall. Charles walked out to the scaffold reportedly wearing two shirts, so that the crowd would not take his shivering in the January cold for fear.

What title did Oliver Cromwell hold from December 1653 until his death?

Lord Protector. Cromwell took the office in December 1653 and kept it for life; in 1661 the restored monarchy dug up his corpse to hang and behead it as a traitor's.

Charles II entered London to restore the monarchy on 29 May 1660, which was also what?

His thirtieth birthday. Charles was born on 29 May 1630, so his entry into London in 1660 fell on his thirtieth birthday; the date was later kept as Oak Apple Day, recalling the Boscobel oak he hid in after Worcester.

Which diarist recorded the Great Plague of 1665 as it swept through London?

Samuel Pepys did well out of the year, writing on New Year's Eve: 'I have never lived so merrily (besides that I never got so much) as I have done this plague time.'

The Great Fire of London broke out in the early hours of 2 September 1666 on which street?

Pudding Lane. A baker's shop there caught fire soon after midnight on a Sunday; by Thursday the blaze had destroyed about 13,200 houses and old St Paul's Cathedral.

In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, William of Orange landed his invasion army at Brixham in which county?

Devon. William had waited for a 'Protestant wind' to carry his fleet down the Channel; he landed on 5 November 1688, and by Christmas James II had left for exile in France.

Which queen became Great Britain's first monarch under the 1707 Acts of Union?

Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, already ruled both realms: England and Scotland had shared a crown since 1603 but kept separate parliaments until the union merged them.

Which 1746 battle near Inverness, often called the last pitched battle on British soil, ended the Jacobite rising?

Culloden. The fighting lasted less than an hour; Bonnie Prince Charlie fled the field and spent months as a fugitive in the Highlands before a French ship carried him to safety.

Which machine did James Hargreaves invent in the 1760s?

The spinning jenny let a single worker spin several threads at once, cutting the labour needed to make yarn and helping to turn spinning from a cottage craft into a factory industry.

Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar in 1805, on which he was fatally shot, was which ship?

HMS Victory. Nelson was walking her quarterdeck with Captain Hardy when a musket shot from the French Redoutable struck him; he died below at about half past four, knowing the battle was won.

Which Prussian field marshal's army arrived to help Wellington defeat Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815?

Blücher. Gebhard von Blücher's Prussian army reached the battlefield on the afternoon of 18 June 1815, two days after its defeat at Ligny, and its arrival on Napoleon's right flank sealed his last battle.

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ended slavery in most of the British Empire by what method?

Compensated emancipation. Parliament voted £20 million to the slave-owners and nothing to the enslaved, most of whom then had to keep working for their old masters as 'apprentices' until 1838.

Which monarch's 63-year reign was Britain's longest until 2015?

Victoria came to the throne at eighteen only because her father's three elder brothers all died without a surviving legitimate child; she then outlasted every monarch before her.

Which London building, designed by the gardener Joseph Paxton, housed the Great Exhibition of 1851?

The Crystal Palace grew out of the glasshouses Paxton had built at Chatsworth; after the exhibition it was rebuilt in south London, where it burned down in 1936.

Florence Nightingale nursed Crimean War soldiers at a hospital across the Black Sea from the fighting, in which place?

Scutari, near Constantinople. More of its patients were dying of disease than of wounds, and the death rate fell only after a sanitary commission repaired the sewers and improved the ventilation.

The 'canonical five' Jack the Ripper murders took place in and around which London district in 1888?

Whitechapel. The killer was never caught; letters claiming to come from him reached police and press, but they were never proved genuine and may have been hoaxes.

Who founded the militant Women's Social and Political Union in 1903?

Emmeline Pankhurst's suffragettes smashed windows and went on hunger strike, yet the moment war broke out in 1914 she called off the campaign and threw herself into the war effort.

Suffragette Emily Davison died after stepping in front of the king's horse at which 1913 race?

The Epsom Derby. Davison was struck by George V's horse Anmer and died four days later; she was carrying a return train ticket, which has led some historians to doubt she meant to die.

On 1 July 1916 the British Army suffered 57,000 casualties in a battle named after which river?

The Somme. A week-long bombardment was meant to smash the German defences, but its shells did little to the deep dugouts, and the defenders emerged to meet the advancing infantry.

Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 in order to marry which American divorcee?

Wallis Simpson. Edward gave up the throne in December 1936 to marry the twice-divorced American; he had been king for less than a year and was never crowned, and his brother became George VI.

What was the codename of the Dunkirk evacuation of May and June 1940?

Operation Dynamo rescued 338,226 Allied troops; despite the legend of the little ships lifting men off the beaches, more than two-thirds of them embarked from the harbour, most along its long breakwater, the mole.

From 7 September 1940, the Luftwaffe bombed London nightly in a campaign Britons called what?

The Blitz drove Londoners underground: the government at first discouraged sheltering in Tube stations, but thousands went down anyway and the platforms became a nightly refuge.

Which Labour health minister drove the creation of the National Health Service after the 1945 election?

Aneurin Bevan, a miner's son from Wales, opened the free service on 5 July 1948, then walked out of the government in 1951 when charges were brought in for dental care and spectacles.

Winston Churchill won which award in 1953?

The Nobel Prize in Literature honoured his histories, biographies and oratory; he could not attend the ceremony, so his wife Clementine collected it for him in Stockholm.

A journalist from which country gave Margaret Thatcher the nickname 'the Iron Lady'?

The Soviet Union. A Soviet army newspaper coined the name in 1976 after she attacked Moscow's policies in a speech; she was delighted with it and was soon calling herself the Iron Lady.

The 1998 Belfast Agreement, which ended most Troubles violence, is better known by which day's name?

Good Friday, 10 April 1998, was the day the deal was struck: the talks chairman, former US senator George Mitchell, had forced the pace with a deadline, and voters approved it that May.

Under which prime minister did the United Kingdom formally leave the European Union on 31 January 2020?

Boris Johnson's government took Britain out at 11 pm London time because the deadline fell at midnight in Brussels; most EU rules still applied during a transition that ran to the end of 2020.

Which 1120 sinking killed Henry I's heir William Adelin and set up the succession crisis?

The White Ship. The White Ship sank off Barfleur in November 1120, drowning William Adelin; Henry made his barons swear to accept his daughter Matilda, but they backed Stephen when Henry died in 1135.

The 12th-century civil war between Stephen and Matilda is known by what name?

The Anarchy. Neither side could win outright; the war ended in 1153 when Stephen accepted Matilda's son as his heir, and a year later the young man came to the throne as Henry II.

Which nation signed an alliance with England in 1373 that is claimed as the world's oldest still in force?

Portugal. Churchill invoked the 1373 treaty in 1943 to announce that neutral Portugal was granting Britain bases in the Azores, calling the alliance 'without parallel in world history'.

Which chancellor of Henry VIII was executed in 1535 for refusing the oath the king demanded?

Thomas More resigned as chancellor over Henry's quarrel with the pope, then went to the block on Tower Hill sooner than swear the oath; his Utopia had imagined an island republic ruled by reason.

Which Welsh leader was proclaimed Prince of Wales in 1400, launching the last major Welsh rising against English rule?

Owain Glyndŵr was the last native Welshman to hold the title; after the revolt's final battles almost nothing is known of him: he was never captured, and where he died remains a mystery.

Which company's shares soared from about £130 to around £1,000 in 1720 before collapsing?

The South Sea Company had been set up to take over part of the national debt; after the crash Robert Walpole worked to restore government credit, and he is now seen as Britain's first prime minister.

The 1819 Peterloo Massacre, in which cavalry charged a crowd demanding parliamentary reform, took place in which northern town?

Manchester. The crowd had gathered at St Peter's Field to hear the radical orator Henry Hunt call for reform; it was Hunt who ended up in prison, serving his sentence in Ilchester gaol.

Which of the Chartists' six demands of 1838 never became law?

Annual elections. Parliament brushed aside Chartist petitions signed by millions, yet the secret ballot, pay for MPs and votes for all men each arrived within eighty years; yearly polls alone did not.

Whose famous wartime report laid out the plan for a universal welfare state and NHS?

William Beveridge's 1942 report set out to slay five 'giant evils': want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness; Attlee's Labour government promised to build the welfare state it outlined.

Which City institution did Attlee's Labour government nationalise in 1946?

The Bank of England had belonged to private stockholders for more than 250 years; Attlee's government went on to take coal, the railways, electricity, gas and steel into public ownership.

Which French president vetoed Britain's applications to join the Common Market in 1963 and 1967?

Charles de Gaulle argued that Britain's economy was incompatible with the Common Market and said 'non' twice; Britain got in only on 1 January 1973, after he had left office.

The 1997 Scottish devolution referendum was held on the 700th anniversary of which William Wallace victory?

Stirling Bridge. Wallace routed a larger English army there on 11 September 1297; seven hundred years later to the day, about three in four voters backed a Scottish Parliament.

Which First Minister resigned after Scotland voted 55% to 45% against independence in 2014?

Alex Salmond announced he was going within hours of the result, telling Scots that 'the dream shall never die'; his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, took over as First Minister.

Which diarist buried his Parmesan cheese in a garden pit to save it from the Great Fire of London?

Samuel Pepys began his diary in 1660 and gave it up in 1669, fearing that writing by dim light was ruining his eyesight.

Stonehenge, built in stages from about 3100 BC, stands on which chalk plateau in Wiltshire?

Salisbury Plain is a long way from where the monument's bluestones began: they were hauled about 150 miles from the Preseli Hills in Wales.

London police officers were nicknamed bobbies after which home secretary, who founded the Metropolitan Police in 1829?

Robert Peel also inspired the less affectionate nickname peelers, and he went on to serve twice as prime minister.

Which warship of Henry VIII sank in the Solent in 1545 and was raised from the seabed in 1982?

Mary Rose went down while leading an attack on French galleys, as the king looked on from Southsea Castle.

Which teenage great-granddaughter of Henry VII was proclaimed queen of England in July 1553 and deposed days later?

Lady Jane Grey is remembered as the Nine Days' Queen, and she was beheaded at the Tower of London the following February.

By what nickname is Richard I, the crusading king who spent barely six months of his reign in England, known?

The Lionheart earned the name as a commander on the Third Crusade, and his later captivity cost England a ransom of 150,000 marks.

Which English city did the Romans found as Eboracum and the Vikings later rename Jorvik?

York began in AD 71 as a legionary fortress, and Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor there in 306.

Which disease did Dr John Snow trace to a contaminated water pump on Broad Street in Soho in 1854?

Cholera was often blamed on bad air, or miasma, but Snow's street-by-street study persuaded the parish to remove the pump's handle.

Which wife of Henry VIII, executed at the Tower in 1536, was the mother of the future Elizabeth I?

Anne Boleyn was spared the common axe: Henry brought an expert swordsman over from Saint-Omer in France for the execution.

Which king lost thirteen American colonies during a reign of nearly 60 years marked by bouts of mental illness?

George III was mocked by satirists as Farmer George, and his eldest son ruled as Prince Regent through the king's final decade.

Which Scottish knight, portrayed in the film Braveheart, was hanged, drawn and quartered in London in 1305?

William Wallace had served as Guardian of Scotland until his defeat at Falkirk in 1298, seven years before his capture near Glasgow.

Which Elizabethan sea captain led the first English voyage around the world, returning in 1580 aboard the Golden Hind?

Francis Drake was knighted on the deck of his ship in 1581, with a French diplomat performing the dubbing for the queen.

Which Whig statesman, in office from 1721 to 1742, is generally regarded as Britain's first prime minister?

Robert Walpole was offered 10 Downing Street by the king in 1732 and accepted it only as a gift to his office, not to himself.

Which 1840 stamp bearing Queen Victoria's profile was the world's first adhesive postage stamp?

The Penny Black lasted under a year: red cancellation ink was easy to remove from it, so the Penny Red took over in 1841.

Which Royal Navy captain led the first recorded European visit to Australia's east coast aboard HMS Endeavour?

James Cook was killed in 1779 on his second visit to Hawaii, when a dispute with islanders turned violent.

Which Royal Navy ship's crew, led by Fletcher Christian, cast Captain William Bligh adrift in an open boat in 1789?

HMS Bounty's mutineers hid on remote Pitcairn Island, while Bligh navigated the ship's launch some 4,000 miles to safety.

Which German prince married his cousin Queen Victoria in 1840 and championed the Great Exhibition of 1851?

Albert died in 1861 aged just 42, and the devastated Victoria wore mourning for the rest of her life.

Which lord chancellor and author of Utopia was executed in 1535 for refusing to accept Henry VIII's break with Rome?

Thomas More was executed on Tower Hill, and four centuries later, in 1935, Pope Pius XI declared him a saint.

Which Hull-born MP led the twenty-year parliamentary campaign that ended the British slave trade in 1807?

William Wilberforce died in 1833, three days after hearing that the bill to abolish slavery itself was sure to pass.

Before Decimal Day in February 1971, the British pound was divided into twenty of which coin?

Shillings outlived the change: the old coins stayed legal tender, each worth five of the new pennies, until the end of 1990.

Which bands of English textile workers smashed machinery in the 1810s in the name of a legendary weaver called Ned?

Luddites signed threatening letters to mill owners as Ned Ludd, an apprentice said to have smashed two stocking frames in 1779.

Which Gloucestershire doctor created the world's first vaccine in 1796 by inoculating a boy with cowpox?

Edward Jenner tried it on James Phipps, his gardener's eight-year-old son, and the word vaccine comes from his Latin term for cowpox.

Which Scottish engineer's separate condenser of the 1760s made the Newcomen steam engine far more efficient?

James Watt also developed the idea of horsepower to measure his engines, and the unit of power was later named after him.

Which ship carried hundreds of Caribbean migrants to Britain in June 1948 and gave its name to their generation?

Empire Windrush began life as a German liner, the Monte Rosa, which Britain seized as a prize of war in 1945.

In May 1926, some 1.7 million British workers walked out in support of locked-out coal miners in which event?

The General Strike ran from 4 to 12 May, when the Trades Union Congress went to Downing Street to call it off.

Who is the only British prime minister to have been assassinated, shot in the House of Commons lobby in 1812?

Spencer Perceval was shot by John Bellingham, a merchant with a grievance against the government, who was hanged a week later.

Which engineer built London's vast network of sewers after the Great Stink of 1858 forced Parliament to act?

Joseph Bazalgette was chief engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and MPs approved his colossal scheme in the very year of the stench.

Which 8th-century king of Mercia gave his name to the great earthwork dyke along the border of England and Wales?

Offa also struck coins showing his wife Cynethryth, the only Anglo-Saxon queen ever depicted on one.

Which rebel earl, who briefly ruled England, called a parliament in 1265 that included ordinary citizens from the towns?

Simon de Montfort was killed within months at the Battle of Evesham, yet he is remembered as a forefather of parliamentary democracy.

Which duchess was queen of France as wife of Louis VII, then queen of England as wife of Henry II?

Eleanor of Aquitaine backed her sons' revolt of 1173, and her husband kept her confined until his death in 1189.

In which city, the English headquarters in France, was Joan of Arc tried for heresy and burned at the stake in 1431?

Rouen saw Joan of Arc condemned at about nineteen, and in 1920 she was canonised and soon named a patron saint of France.

Which nickname was given to the supporters of Parliament who fought Charles I's Cavaliers in the English Civil War?

Roundheads was a term of derision mocking the cropped hair of some Puritans, and unlike Cavalier it was never embraced by its targets.

Which island did China cede to Britain as a colony in 1842 under the treaty that ended the First Opium War?

Hong Kong Island changed hands under the Treaty of Nanking, which also made China pay an indemnity and open five treaty ports to trade.

A war between Britain and Spain that began in 1739 is named after which severed body part of Captain Robert Jenkins?

Ear and captain parted company in 1731, allegedly at the hands of a Spanish coastguard officer searching the ship for contraband, eight years before war broke out.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, a British cavalry assault launched on a misunderstood order, came at which 1854 battle?

Balaclava saw the Light Brigade ride at the wrong guns: Lord Raglan had meant another target, and the officer who carried his order died in the first minute.

Which British general's surrender at Yorktown in 1781 ended the major fighting of the American War of Independence?

Charles Cornwallis recovered from the defeat to become governor-general of India and later lord lieutenant of Ireland.

At which Buckinghamshire estate did wartime codebreakers, Alan Turing among them, crack Germany's Enigma ciphers?

Bletchley Park had a head start from Poland, whose cipher bureau shared its Enigma breakthroughs five weeks before war broke out.

At which mission station in January 1879 did about 150 British and colonial troops hold off up to 4,000 Zulu warriors?

Rorke's Drift was attacked hours after a Zulu army crushed a British column at nearby Isandlwana, and the defence became the 1964 film Zulu.

Britain's 1896 war with which sultanate lasted under 45 minutes, the shortest in recorded history?

Zanzibar's new sultan had moved into the palace without British approval; shelling set it ablaze and he took refuge in the German consulate.

At which 1757 battle did Robert Clive's bribery of an enemy commander help the East India Company win Bengal?

Plassey was won largely by treachery: Clive had promised Mir Jafar, the Nawab's army chief, the throne of Bengal.

From which English port did the Titanic set out on its maiden Atlantic crossing in April 1912?

Southampton suffered the heaviest losses from the sinking, because four out of every five crew members came from the town.

Which war secretary's stern face and pointing finger fronted Britain's most famous army recruitment poster of 1914?

Lord Kitchener's image began as a magazine cover drawn by Alfred Leete, and he drowned in 1916 when HMS Hampshire struck a mine off Orkney.

Which Royal Navy captain reached the South Pole in January 1912, weeks after Roald Amundsen, and died on the way back?

Robert Falcon Scott and his remaining companions died about 12 miles short of their next supply depot.

Which Cunard liner was torpedoed by a German submarine off Ireland in May 1915, killing almost 1,200 people?

Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes, too fast to lower more than six of her lifeboats, and 128 Americans were among the dead.

The 1913 'Cat and Mouse Act' let prisons free and later re-arrest suffragettes who used which form of protest?

Hunger strikes had been met with force-feeding, which caused a public outcry, so prisoners were freed to recover and then taken back to jail.

Which Welsh-speaking chancellor introduced the People's Budget of 1909 and became prime minister in 1916?

David Lloyd George saw the budget blocked for a year by the Lords, a clash that forced two elections and led to the Parliament Act 1911.

Which army officer ran an experimental camp for boys on Brownsea Island in 1907, launching the Scout movement?

Robert Baden-Powell used the camp to test ideas for his book Scouting for Boys, mixing boys from different social backgrounds.

Which Royal Navy battleship, launched in 1906, gave its name to a whole generation of big-gun warships?

HMS Dreadnought helped spark a naval arms race with Germany, yet her only significant action was ramming and sinking a German submarine in 1915.

Which American-born doctor, fleeing by liner in 1910, was the first criminal caught using wireless telegraphy?

Dr Crippen was recognised by the captain of the SS Montrose, whose radio message let a Scotland Yard inspector race ahead on a faster liner.

Which South African town's relief in May 1900, after a 217-day Boer siege, sparked wild street celebrations in Britain?

Mafeking's relief gave English the verb to maffick, meaning to celebrate extravagantly and in public.