The word ‘Britain’ is originated from the name of a Celtic tribe ‘the Brythons’. This union includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It has population of 63.1 million people. Great Britain (this includes England, Scotland and Wales) is surrounded by the North See, the Atlantic Ocean, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. Great Britain is connected to the Northern Ireland by the Irish Sea.
The capital of the United Kingdom is London with a population of more than five million. About 30% of today’s Londoners were born outside the United Kingdom. London became the first city in the world to have an underground subway system.
The United Kingdom uses the pound sterling as their official currency. The official language is English. Britain does not have a written constitution. A strange cultural fact about England: it is illegal to die in the House of Parliament.
Until 1832, there were only two universities in England: Oxford and Cambridge. Until 1977, it was forbidden for lecturers at Oxford University to marry. Also, women were not allowed to graduate until 1920.
The British Empire at its pick in the 18th century was about 20% of the world’s surface. British were the first to create concentration camps. They used them to imprison children, women and the elderly during the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902). As a result, around 28,000 women and children died in the camps from starvation, disease and exposure. Out of 28,000 people who dies in the camps, 24,074 were children. 50% of those children were under the age of 16.
The UK is a motherland to a many famous great writers including J.K. Rowling. The author of the Harry Potter series is one of fife self-made female billionaires in the world and the first writer in the world to become a billionaire.
Stonehenge is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the UK. They say it is more than 5,000 years old. This makes Stonehenge older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
Windsor Palace is the largest and the oldest of the occupied castles in the world.
According to the Romanian National Tourist Office, Prince Charles is related to Vlad the Impaler, a 15-century ruler, also known as Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, a prototype of the legendary vampire Dracula.
Queen Victoria passed through her children two genetic disorders, Haemophilia B and porphyria. This unfortunate fact contributed to a downfall of two big dynasties: the 300-hundred years old Russian royal family of Romanov and the Spanish House of Bourbon.