The British eat twice as many baked beans per head as Americans do. William the Conqueror ordered that everyone should go to bed at eight o’clock.
Some 80,000 umbrellas are lost annually on the London Underground.
Nothing officially happened in Britain between 3 and 14 September 1752. This was because the country was switching from the old Julian calendar to the Western or Gregorian calendar, a move initially instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Britain didn’t get round to changing until 1752 when those 11 days went unobserved.
