Portal:United Kingdom
The United Kingdom Portal
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is 94,354 square miles (244,376 km2), with an estimated population of nearly 67.6 million people in 2022.
In 1707, the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland united under the Treaty of Union to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Acts of Union 1800 incorporated the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Most of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922 as the Irish Free State, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 created the present name, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The UK became the first industrialised country and was the world's foremost power for the majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly during the "Pax Britannica" between 1815 and 1914. At its height in the 1920s, the British Empire encompassed almost a quarter of the world's landmass and population, and was the largest empire in history. However, its involvement in the First World War and the Second World War damaged Britain's economic power and a global wave of decolonisation led to the independence of most British colonies. British influence can be observed in the legal and political systems of many of its former colonies, and British culture remains globally influential, particularly in language, literature, music and sport. English is the world's most widely spoken language and the third-most spoken native language.
The UK is a developed country and has the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), and the ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. It is a recognised nuclear state, and is ranked fourth globally in military expenditure. The UK has been a permanent member of the UN Security Council since its first session in 1946. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the OECD, NATO, the Five Eyes, AUKUS and the CPTPP. (Full article...)
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Roy of the Rovers is a British comic strip about the life and exploits of a fictional footballer named Roy Race, who played for Melchester Rovers. The strip first appeared in the Tiger in 1954, before giving its name to a weekly (and later monthly) comic magazine, published by IPC and Fleetway from 1976 until 1995, in which it was the main feature. The weekly strip ran until 1993, following Roy's playing career until its conclusion after he lost his left foot in a helicopter crash. When the monthly comic was launched later that year, the focus switched to Roy's son, Rocky, who also played for Melchester. This publication folded after only 19 issues. The adventures of the Race family were subsequently featured from 1997 until May 2001 in the monthly Match of the Day football magazine, in which father and son were reunited as manager and player respectively. Football-themed stories were a staple of British comics from the 1950s onwards, and Roy of the Rovers was one of the most popular. To keep the strip exciting, Melchester was almost every year either competing for major honours or struggling against relegation to a lower division. The strip followed the structure of the football season, thus there were several months each year when there was no football. (Full article...)
Featured biography
Mary of Teck (1867–1953) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Empress of India as the consort of King-Emperor George V. At the age of 24 she was betrothed to Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the heir to the British throne, but six weeks after the engagement was announced he unexpectedly died of pneumonia. The following year she became engaged to the new heir, Albert Victor's brother, George. As his queen consort from 1910, she supported her husband through World War I, his ill health, and major political changes arising from the aftermath of the war and the rise of socialism and nationalism. After George's death in 1936, her eldest son Edward became King-Emperor, but to her dismay he abdicated the same year in order to marry twice-divorced American socialite Mrs. Wallis Simpson. She supported her second son, Albert, who succeeded to the throne as George VI, until his death in 1952. She died the following year, at the beginning of the reign of her granddaughter, Elizabeth II. Queen Mary was known for setting the tone of the British Royal Family, as a model of regal formality and propriety, especially during state occasions. (Full article...)
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Did you know -
- ... that Ed Miliband retweeted "Chaos with Ed Miliband" with a clown emoji during the October 2022 United Kingdom government crisis?
- ... that Ruth Northway is the United Kingdom's first professor of learning disability nursing?
- ... that many places in the United Kingdom were racially segregated and non-white customers were banned from using spaces and facilities, even though the law never officially permitted such a colour bar?
- ... that Elizabeth II's childhood toys at 145 Piccadilly included 30 toy horses and a farm set collected from Woolworths?
- ... that when Westminster City Council in London agreed to use "global majority" as a more inclusive term than BAME or "ethnic minority", a Conservative MP called it "deeply sinister"?
- ... that Graham Fraser pioneered cochlear implantation in the United Kingdom?
In the news
- 8 May 2024 – Elected British politicians who have changed party affiliation
- British Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke defects to the opposition Labour Party, citing the Sunak government's failure to stop the English Channel migrant crisis. (Reuters)
- 3 May 2024 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- British Foreign Secretary David Cameron promises £3 billion of annual military aid to Ukraine for "as long as it takes." (Reuters)
- 2 May 2024 – 2024 United Kingdom local elections
- The United Kingdom holds local elections, as well as a parliamentary by-election in the Blackpool South constituency. The Labour Party wins most councils. (BBC News)
- 1 May 2024 – Rwanda asylum plan
- British authorities begin detaining migrants ahead of deportation flights to Rwanda. (Reuters)
- Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris announces the deployment of 100 police officers to the border with Northern Ireland amid fears that thousands of migrants might flee the UK in order to avoid deportation to Rwanda. Ireland also declares the United Kingdom a "safe country" so that asylum seekers can be deported back to the UK. (The Telegraph) (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)
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