Portal:United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK or U.K.) or Britain, is a sovereign country located off the northwestern coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland. Otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the southwest, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea separates Great Britain and Ireland. The total area of the United Kingdom is 94,000 square miles (240,000 km2).
The United Kingdom is a unitary parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the world's longest-serving current head of state. The United Kingdom's capital is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. The United Kingdom consists of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers. Other major cities include Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester.
The nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, followed by the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The UK's name was adopted in 1927 to reflect the change. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's landmass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language, culture and political systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), and the ninth-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). It has a high-income economy and a very high human development index rating, ranking 15th in the world. It was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a recognised nuclear weapons state and is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Interpol and the World Trade Organization (WTO). It was a member of the European Union (EU) and its predecessor, the European Economic Community (EEC) from 1 January 1973 until withdrawing on 31 January 2020.
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Brabham was a British racing car manufacturer and Formula One racing team. Founded in 1960 by driver Jack Brabham and designer Ron Tauranac, the team won four drivers' and two constructors' world championships in its 30-year Formula One history. Jack Brabham's 1966 drivers' championship remains the only victory by a car bearing the driver's own name. In the 1960s, Brabham was the world's largest manufacturer of open wheel racing cars for sale to customer teams, and had built more than 500 cars by 1970. During this period, teams using Brabham cars won championships in Formula Two and Formula Three and competed in the Indianapolis 500. British businessman Bernie Ecclestone owned Brabham between 1972 and 1988. Under his ownership, Brabham introduced innovations such as the "fan car", in-race refuelling, carbon brakes, and hydropneumatic suspension, and was the first team to win a drivers' championship with a turbocharged car. Ecclestone sold the team in 1988. Its final owner was the Middlebridge Group, a Japanese engineering firm. Midway through the 1992 season, the team collapsed financially as Middlebridge was unable to meet loan repayments. In 2009 an unsuccessful attempt was made by a German organisation to enter the 2010 Formula One season using the Brabham name. (more...)
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Edward Wright (1561–1615) was an English mathematician and cartographer noted for his book Certaine Errors in Navigation, which for the first time explained the mathematical basis of the Mercator projection, and set out a reference table giving the linear scale multiplication factor as a function of latitude, calculated for each minute of arc up to a latitude of 75°. This was the essential step needed to make practical both the making and the navigational use of Mercator charts. In 1589 Elizabeth I requested that he carry out navigational studies with a raiding expedition organised by the Earl of Cumberland to the Azores to capture Spanish galleons. The expedition's route was the subject of the first map to be prepared according to Wright's projection, which was published in Certaine Errors in 1599. The same year, Wright created and published the first world map produced in England and the first to use the Mercator projection since Gerardus Mercator's original 1569 map. Apart from a number of other books and pamphlets, Wright translated John Napier's pioneering 1614 work which introduced the idea of logarithms from Latin into English. This was published after Wright's death as A Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithmes. Wright's work influenced, among other persons, Dutch astronomer and mathematician Willebrord Snellius; Adriaan Metius, the geometer and astronomer from Holland; and the English mathematician Richard Norwood. (more...)
Did you know...
- ... that the Mary Rose was a Tudor period warship that sank during the Battle of the Solent in 1545 and was salvaged (pictured) by maritime archaeologists 437 years later?
- ... that Sir Hugh Norman-Walker was forced to decline the appointment of the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man in 1973 because his wife would not take up the new post with him?
- ... that a skimmington, a custom in which victims were mocked and humiliated in a noisy public procession, occurred in England as late as 1917?
- ... that Princess Alice of the United Kingdom was married to Prince Louis of Hesse in an atmosphere described by Queen Victoria as "more of a funeral than a wedding"?
- ... that as a result of the Scarman report into the 1981 Brixton riots, the independent Police Complaints Authority was established in 1985?
- ... that the archaeological finds from Steeple Langford include a Bronze Age palstave and a Romano-British painted pebble?
- ... that Slade's Case has been called a "watershed" moment in English law?
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Leadenhall Market is a covered market in the City of London, located in Gracechurch Street. The market dates back to the fourteenth century. The ornate roof structure, painted green, maroon and cream, and cobbled floors of the current building, designed in 1881 by Sir Horace Jones, make the building a tourist attraction. It was used to represent the area of London near the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon Alley in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
In the news
- 19 October 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic
- COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
- 16 October 2020 –
- Moody's downgrades the United Kingdom's debt rating to Aa3 with a stable outlook. (The Wall Street Journal)
- 16 October 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic
- COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
- 15 October 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic
- COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
- 14 October 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic
- COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
- The government announces a nationwide ban on visits to homes or gardens in almost all circumstances, except for providing care to children or elderly and vulnerable people. It also announces that Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal, which border Northern Ireland, will move to Level 4 restrictions between midnight tomorrow until November 10, which means that non-essential retail stores will close and that all non-essential workers will work from home. (The Irish Times)
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