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Millions of Englishmen will be waking up with sore heads tomorrow after celebrating their cricket team winning the Ashes. The Ashes urn may only be about 5 inches high, but to English sportsfans it's the one trophy they would like their country to win more than any other other than football's...

Here are some fascinating titbits of information about the world's 79th largest nation - the UK. Did you know that the British Isles consists of 6,289 islands, most of them uninhabited? And did you know that Britain, the largest of the British Isles, is the world's ninth largest island, and...

At 220 miles in length, the River Severn (Afon Hafren in Welsh) is the longest river in Britain, flowing through both Wales and England (the Thames is the longest river wholly in England), though in international terms it is a tiddler - there are probably hundreds of rivers that hardly anybody...

It would be very strange indeed if a year went by without a Prince Philipism being uttered. The Queen's husband, refreshingly, isn't known for his political correctness - and that's one of the reasons why the British people love him so much. On a state visit to China in 1986, Prince Philip...

A ghost has been spotted in the former home of Edward Jenner, the British scientist who invented the smallpox vaccine. It appears that a portly man is sitting on a chair between two beds, as seen through an open doorway. Staff at the house in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, believe it is the...

Prince Harry, 24, has passed his basic helicopter training course. Harry has been training with the Army Air Corps and sources say he is now likely to opt to fly Lynx support helicopters, rather than Apaches or Gazelles, the two other helicopters used by the Army Air Corps. Britain is...

On 1st September 1939, the very day that war broke out, Britain began Operation Pied Piper. This was the evacuation of civilians, mostly children, from urban areas to rural areas in case the Germans bombed the cities. From September 1939 until June 1940 - when the Battle of Britain started -...

Sixty-four years since it ended, World War II can still put many people's lives at risk. Over 1000 people from the villages of Ebberston and Allerston near Pickering, North Yorkshire were evacuated from their homes yesterday after a huge 500lb World War II bomb was discovered. It was...

Living in a beautiful 17th Century thatched cottage in a picturesque village is lots of people's idea of a high quality of life. But for one woman, vandals have been causing her misery. Mrs Dillistone spent £16,000 having the roof of her cottage in Uffington, Oxfordshire re-thatched last...

Could this be a bit of a blow to Darwinists? Despite being 155 million years old (or so the scientists say) this squid fossil is so perfectly preserved it looks as though it died much more recently (maybe it did). In fact, scientists have even been able to extract the ink from the animal and...

On Monday, Britain's Ministry of Defence released more than 800 reports of UFO sightings that occurred in Britain between 1993 and 1996 which the MoD logged, assessed and filed. They consist of more than 4,000 pages of police reports, witness statements, descriptions of UFOs and official...

Tiger Brewer has become the world's youngest wing-waker - aged just 8 years old. Tiger was strapped top of the wings of his grandfather's Boeing Spearman bi-plane and reached speeds of 100 mph after taking off from RFC Rendcomb Airfield near Cirencester, Gloucestershire. The previous record...

To this day, the British people view the Dambusters (617 Squadron of the RAF) as brave heroes, who took part in one of the most daring (and ingenious) operations of World War II, a lasting symbol of Britain's gallant fight against Nazi tyranny, an example of what might happen when evil regimes...

Former Beirut hostage Terry Waite is standing for parliament as an independent. Waite, who is a Quaker, an Anglican, a humanitarian and an author, and who was held hostage in the Lebanese capital between 1987 and 1991, aims to bring down shamed Tory MP Alan Duncan, the Shadow Leader of the...

Spare a thought for this little fellow. Ralph, a Humboldt penguin, has a condition which leaves him almost always featherless. Whereas other Humboldts lose their old feathers to grow new ones, Ralph's new feathers always fall out in just one day. This left him at risk of severe sunburn...

Exactly 190 years ago today, the 16th August 1819, a crowd of 60,000 - 80,000 gathered at St Peter's Fields in Manchester, Lancashire, to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. Just 2% of people in Britain at the time had the vote, and all of those were (mostly wealthy) men. Hunger...

The British miltary death toll in Afghanistan yesterday reached the 200 mark. The unnamed infantryman from The 2nd Battalion The Royal Welsh regiment was badly injured by a roadside bomb while on a vehicle patrol in Musa Qa’leh in Helmand province on Thursday morning. He was flown back to...

The row in the United States about the reform of its health system has spilled over to the United Kingdom. Many American right-wingers and Republicans are attacking Britain's National Health Service (NHS), which was formed by Health Minister Aneurin Bevan in the aftermath of World War II when...

British photographer Michael Bosanko doesn't use spray cans to graffiti British landmarks - he uses light. Bosanko uses long exposure shots and different coloured torches to 'draw with light' in the night-time shots. He visited London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Newcastle and Edinburgh in one...

In about the year 1050, Lady Godiva, the wife of Leofric, the Earl of Mercia, took pity on the people of Coventry, who were suffering under her husband's oppressive taxation. Lady Godiva appealed again and again to her husband to remit the tolls, but to no avail. At last, tired of her...