British History

A shy and unmusical stable-hand suddenly began to sing wise and moving hymns.

In 657, a monastery was founded in Whitby, in the Kingdom of Northumbria. It gave employment to several labourers, including an elderly stable-hand named Caedmon who would do anything to avoid singing.

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Michael Faraday showed that gases could be compressed and evaporated to preserve food and make ice.

The development of modern refrigeration involved French, American and Australian inventors, but it was a Scottish professor and an English chemist who made the key breakthroughs.

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Railways not only brought fresh, healthy food to the urban poor, they improved the conditions of working animals.

In the 1850s, London could not house enough cows for its population, so dairymen watered down their milk from cholera-infested roadside pumps, adding snails or sheep’s brains to thicken it (more). No legislation could have solved that dilemma of supply and demand. But railways did.

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In 1859, peaceful co-existence on the Canadian border was severely tested by a marauding pig.

Even quite late in Queen Victoria’s reign, Britain and the United States of America were still carving up what had once been British colonial territory. One disputed region was San Juan Island near Vancouver, where a dead pig almost led to war.

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A team of amateurs gave Europe’s finest a drubbing.

THE Lipton Trophy, a short-lived European soccer competition, was won - twice - by little West Auckland, a team of plucky amateurs from County Durham.

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Opened in 1725, the Tanfield Railway is one of the oldest railways still operating anywhere in the world.

Dating from 1725, the Tanfield Railway formed part of an extraordinary network of horse-drawn wagonways in North East England that became the basis of the railway revolution.

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