British History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘British History’
William Hyde Wollaston discovered new elements and helped Faraday to greatness, all from the top of a tea-tray.
A Royal Commission observed in 1819 that while metric measurements do have clear advantages, for many practical purposes imperial measurements are actually more convenient. One of the members of this remarkably sensible Commission was Dr William Wollaston (1766-1828), a man of unimpeachable scientific pedigree.
Faraday’s work on electromagnetism made him an architect of modern living, and one of Albert Einstein’s three most revered physicists.
American physicist Albert Einstein kept three portraits on his wall, men who had inspired his own world-changing study of physics. They were all British: Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, and Michael Faraday (1791-1867).
What George Stephenson was to the railways of England, Sandford Fleming was to the railways of Canada.
At the start of the nineteenth century, railways brought a handful of struggling colonies together to form a great nation, and Sandford Fleming (1827-1915), then just a young Scottish surveyor from Kirkcaldy, played as important a part in that as any other man.
The great Dr Johnson argues that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Samuel Johnson, one of England’s literary giants, encourages us to employ as much courtesy and good cheer as we can muster in our dealings with those who disagree with us, appealing to no less than the Apostle St Peter for authority.
Scandinavian tradition says that the daughter of King Harold was consort to one the great rulers of Kievan Rus’.
After Vladimir I adopted Christianity in the 10th century, the rulers of what would become Russia became prime candidates for dynastic marriage into the great royal houses of Europe. An example of particular interest to the English is the Princess Gytha, daughter of King Harold Godwinson, who married Vladimir’s great-grandson, Vladimir II Monomakh.