365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Humphrey Davy

9th January 1816: Humphrey Davy trials his safety lamp at Hebburn Colliery. When I left school, we still had pits in Nottinghamshire. Five minutes from my house was Moorgreen Colliery, as seen in the picture. When we visited grandparents every other...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Queen Mary 2

January 8th 2004: RMS Queen Mary 2 is christened and is the largest ocean liner ever built. Still. Cruises have never appealed to me. There could be endless gourmet food, a microbrewery and Pearl Jam playing an acoustic set in the Tropicana Lounge,...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: William Dickson

January 7th: William Dickson patents 35mm film.  Apparently. Whilst developing the Kinetoscope for Edison, Scotsman William Dixon is said to have invented 35mm celluloid film and patented it. And I'm buggered if I can find any internet reference...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: The Stones roll

January 6th: The Rolling Stones play the first gig of their first headline tour. Which, according to the Rolling Stones database of Nico Zentgraf was at the Granada Theatre, Harrow-on-the-Hill. And the possible set was Girls/Come...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: William Smith

January 5th: William Smith discovers the principle of faunal succession. Sort of. I studied geography. In primary school, I yomped through all the 'Countries Of The World' worksheets so my teacher had to make up more for me to complete. Hence my...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Rose Heilbron

January 4th: Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey. What surprises me more about Rose Heilbron is not what she achieved but how I've never heard of her before. Especially when I'm in Liverpool. Heilbron was born and educated in the city and went on to be a trailblazing female barrister; the first woman to - lead an English murder trial - plead a case in the House...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Thatcher and Ice Cream

January 3rd: 1n 1988, Margaret Thatcher becomes the longest-serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century. Almost. As Hugo Young has taught me, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, completed his third term of...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Kipling writes 'If'

January 2nd: The Jameson Raid of 1896 fails and later inspires Rudyard Kipling to write 'If', one of the most mawkish poems in English literature. It graces the likes of over-wrought Powerpoint presentations, sports trailers on TV and the entrance...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: The Union Flag

January 1st: The Union Flag (as we know it today) is first flown. The Acts of Union passed in 1800 came into effect on January 1st 1801 and so the Union Flag was revised into the form we see today. I remember little about my junior school education....

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British

It's backtrack time. I've just picked up 365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British from the library. Mainly because I recently bought another book by the same author, Richard Happer, which has been making me snort hot tea out of my nose on a regular basis. This one's a little different; more in the QI 'fascinating facts' mould. Each of which inevitably leads me onto the tinternet to find out a...

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