England’s story is filled with royal scandals, strange coincidences, quiet innovations, and moments of unexpected drama that rarely make it into textbooks. 25 Facts to Understand England Better brings together centuries of forgotten history, cultural quirks, and remarkable true stories that reveal how the nation was shaped over time. From medieval power struggles and Victorian habits to modern-day mysteries and sporting traditions, these facts offer a deeper look at what truly defines England.
Bedchamber Scandal Sparks Exile
1. In 955 A.D., after King Eadwig failed to attend a meeting of nobles following his coronation, Bishop Dunstan went to fetch him from his bedchamber. Dunstan discovered the young king in bed with two women, a mother and her daughter. Angered, Dunstan dragged Eadwig away. Realizing afterwards that he had provoked the king, Dunstan fled England and refused to return until after Eadwig’s death.
2. The Queen of England once “terrorized” Saudi Arabia’s king by driving him around. In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive.
3. A huge shipment of 52-gallon drums filled with mustard gas and nerve agents rests on the seabed off the coasts of Ireland and England.
4. About seven centuries ago Edward II’s rule as King of England was so calamitous that his opponents decided they could not leave him alive; they compelled his abdication, imprisoned him, and then assassinated him by inserting a red hot poker into his anus. He was afterward, ironically, nicknamed Edward Ironside. The force that deposed him was a coalition of French armies led by his own wife, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer (it was widely claimed that Edward II was homosexual, which the account links to the anal burning). Isabella became known as the She-Wolf of France.
5. After riding England’s first escalator, customers were offered a glass of brandy to revive them from their ordeal.
6. Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards became England’s first Olympic ski jumper in 52 years. He had no money, no coach, no team and had learned to ski jump only 18 months earlier. He wore six pairs of socks inside his secondhand boots, was given a helmet by the Italians and used skis from the Austrian team.
7. Following the release of the final Harry Potter film, animal sanctuaries across England had to cope with hundreds of pet owls that were abandoned by their owners.
8. A law that would have stripped any new husband of his wealth effectively prevented the widowed mother of Henry VI from remarrying. As a result, she married a landless Welsh servant named Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur. His name later became Owen Tudor, and his descendants would rule England for over 100 years.
9. Queen Victoria insisted her train never exceed 40 miles per hour and that it be brought to a complete stop when she ate her meals.
10. A 48-year-old health food advocate from Croydon, England, drank himself to death by consuming 10 gallons (37.85 liters) of carrot juice in ten days, causing him to overdose on vitamin A and suffer severe liver damage.
Jamaican Cocoa Taste Reinvented
11. An Irishman named Hans Sloane invented chocolate milk while visiting Jamaica in the 1680s. Local people mixed cocoa with water, which Sloane found nauseating. He therefore mixed it with milk to make it more pleasant. He brought the recipe back to England, where pharmacists made and sold it as medicine.
12. The Great Pyramid is composed of 6.3 million tons of material, which is more material than was used to build all the churches and cathedrals in England. Its base covers 13 acres and is flat and level to within 1 centimeter.
13. The United Kingdom’s “God Save the Queen” was the first national anthem and was adopted by other countries such as Russia (until 1833), Germany (until 1918), Iceland (until 1944), Switzerland (until 1961), Liechtenstein, and New Zealand. It was played twice before a 2003 soccer game between Liechtenstein and England.
14. In 1983, a man from Cheshire, England confessed to his wife’s murder when a body was discovered near his house. The remains turned out to be a preserved bog body from the Iron Age.
15. A nonexistent town in West Lancashire, England appears on Google Earth and Google Maps. On those maps the nonexistent settlement is named Argleton.
16. In 1958 actor Gareth Jones collapsed and died between scenes of the live television play Underground at the Associated British Corporation studios in Manchester, England. Director Ted Kotcheff continued the play to its conclusion, improvising around Jones’s absence. The character Jones was to play was to have a heart attack, which is what Jones suffered during the performance.
17. In Nevada a disturbance involving as few as two people is legally considered a riot. In the United States generally it takes three people. In England the threshold is twelve people.
18. A ten-year-old girl named Laura Buxton from Blurton, Staffordshire, England released a balloon with her name and address on it; it floated 140 miles and landed in the backyard of a house where another ten-year-old girl named Laura Buxton lived, causing a huge chain of coincidences between the two.
19. When Edward I of England was returning from the Ninth Crusade in 1272, he learned that his father had died and that he had become king of England. Instead of returning home immediately to be crowned, Edward spent almost two years taking a leisurely trip through Italy and France and did not return until 1274.
20. The Norman Invasion of England in 1066 caused many English noblemen to flee England for the Byzantine Empire (modern day Turkey and Greece). There the English diaspora founded the town New York, 600 years before “New York” in America existed.
Medieval Macaroni and Cheese
21. The oldest recorded recipe for macaroni and cheese comes from 14th-century England.
22. On Christmas Eve 1994, two cars collided near Flitcham, England; the drivers were twin sisters delivering gifts to each other, named Lorraine and Lavinia Christmas.
23. After Australia defeated England in an 1882 cricket match, a British newspaper ran an obituary declaring English cricket dead; the symbolic ashes from that cremation were placed in an urn, and the two teams still compete for it every two years.
24. The King’s School in Canterbury, England, is the world’s oldest operating school at 1,420 years old; it was founded in AD 597 during the Late Antiquity era, one hundred years after the fall of Rome.
25. Some of the Mayflower Pilgrims were not departing because of religious persecution in England but because they feared the tolerant Dutch Republic was influencing their children.
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