Portal:England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. The country is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers roughly 62%, and over 100 smaller adjacent islands. It has land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, and is otherwise surrounded by the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south, the Celtic Sea to the south-west, and the Irish sea to the west. Continental Europe lies to the south-east, and Ireland to the west. The population was 56,490,048 at the 2021 census. London is both the largest city and the capital.
The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The Kingdom of England, which included Wales after 1535, ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707 when the Acts of Union put the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year into effect; this resulted in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland that created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
England is the origin of many well known worldwide exports, including the English language, the English legal system (which served as the basis for the common law systems of many other countries), association football, and the Church of England; its parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England is home to the two oldest universities in the English-speaking world: the University of Oxford, founded in 1096, and the University of Cambridge, founded in 1209. Both universities are ranked among the most prestigious in the world.
England's terrain chiefly consists of low hills and plains, especially in the centre and south. Upland and mountainous terrain is mostly found in the north and west, including Dartmoor, the Lake District, the Pennines, and the Shropshire Hills. The country's capital is London, the greater metropolitan of which has a population of 14.2 million as of 2021, representing the United Kingdom's largest metropolitan area. England's population of 56.3 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom, largely concentrated around London, the South East, and conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, and Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century. (Full article...)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (UK: /ˈwʊlstənkrɑːft/; née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who is best known for writing the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.
Mary's mother died 11 days after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Mary came to have a troubled relationship. (Full article...)Selected article -
Heathrow Airport (/ˌhiːθˈroʊ, ˈhiːθroʊ/), called London Airport until 1966 (IATA: LHR, ICAO: EGLL), is the main international airport serving London, the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system (the others being Gatwick, City, Luton, Stansted and Southend). The airport is owned and operated by Heathrow Airport Holdings, owned mostly by Qatar Investment Authority, Public Investment Fund and CDPQ. In 2023, Heathrow was the busiest airport in Europe, the fourth-busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic and the second-busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic. As of 2023, Heathrow is the airport with the most international connections in the world.
Heathrow was founded as a small airfield in 1930 but was developed into a much larger airport after World War II. It lies 14 miles (23 kilometres) west of Central London on a site that covers 4.74 square miles (12.3 square kilometres). It was gradually expanded over 75 years and now has two parallel east–west runways, four operational passenger terminals and one cargo terminal. The airport is the primary hub for British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. (Full article...)General images
In July 1385 Richard II, king of England, led an English army into Scotland. The invasion was, in part, retaliation for Scottish border raids, but was most provoked by the arrival of a French army into Scotland the previous summer. England and France were engaged in the Hundred Years' War, and France and Scotland had a treaty to support each other. The English King had only recently come of age, and it was expected that he would play a martial role just as his father, Edward the Black Prince, and grandfather Edward III had done. There was some disagreement amongst the English leadership whether to invade France or Scotland; the King's uncle, John of Gaunt, favoured invading France, to gain him a tactical advantage in Castile, the throne of which he claimed through his wife, Constance, with little success. The King's friends among the nobility – who were also Gaunt's enemies – preferred an invasion of Scotland. A parliament the year before had granted funds for a continental campaign and it was deemed unwise to flout the House of Commons. The Crown could barely afford a big campaign. Richard summoned the feudal levy, which had not been called for many years; this was the last occasion on which it was to be summoned.
Richard promulgated ordinances to maintain discipline in his invasion force, but the campaign was beset by problems from the start. One of Richard's knights was killed by the king's half-brother before the army even reached Newcastle; once there, the leadership was divided and often indulged more in internecine fighting than in fighting against the Scots, who, with their French allies, had retired in the face of the English and refused battle. The Scots scorched the earth as they retired. The invaders swiftly exhausted their food and other supplies; by the time the English reached Edinburgh, they had achieved little of military value, mostly the burning of churches. Gaunt may have proposed chasing the Scots into the mountains to force them to battle, but the King refused to countenance such a tactic and the army soon withdrew to England. As Richard's force left Scotland, the Franco-Scottish army counter-invaded England from the West March getting almost as far as Carlisle and ravaged Cumbria and Durham on its return. Richard was to propose another invasion of Scotland a few years later, but this came to nothing; and on his next invasion, of Ireland in 1399, he was deposed by Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke. (Full article...)Did you know?
- ...that the Rev. Arthur Wagner, the first curate of the Church of St. Paul, Brighton, England, commissioned stained glass windows of his mother, father and aunt for the church?
- ...that Scots' Dike was constructed by the English and the Scots in 1552 to mark the division of the Debatable Lands and thereby settle the exact boundary between the kingdoms of Scotland and England?
- ...that the famed message "England expects that every man will do his duty" is misquoted on Nelson's Column in London?
In the news
- 4 May 2024 – 2024 London mayoral election
- Sadiq Khan wins re-election as mayor of London, England, with 43.8% of the vote, becoming the first London mayor to be elected to a third term. (BBC News)
- 30 April 2024 – 2024 Hainault sword attack
- A man attacks people with a sword after crashing a car into a house in Hainault, London, England, United Kingdom, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring four other people, including two police officers. (BBC News) (The New York Times)
- 17 April 2024 –
- Scientists announce that they have identified fossil remains of the Ichthyotitan, the largest marine reptile currently known, in the Westbury Formation in England. (NOS)
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“ | An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one. | ” |
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England • Bedfordshire • Brighton • Cheshire • Cornwall • Derbyshire • Dorset • Greater Manchester • Hampshire • Lincolnshire • London • Merseyside • Northamptonshire • North East England • Sheffield • Surrey. Warwickshire • West Midlands • Worcestershire • Yorkshire
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