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One is a city in the north of Italy, and one is a city in the north of England. And there the similarities end. Middlesbrough is famous for its huge Transporter Bridge, Roy Chubby Brown, its chemical works, oil refinery, rubbish football team and the humble Arriva bus service. Venice is...

Ahh, the Great British Pub. It is as quintessentially British as cricket, fish and chips, Marmite, Monty Python or Stephen Fry. Go to other countries, and most bars have ordinary, mundane names. In the US and Canada, bars may be called Bob's Beers or Al's Alehouse. But British pubs have...

A beautiful dish belonging to a wealthy Londoner at the time that Britain was a part of the Roman Empire has been unearthed. The bowl is a rare "millefiori" ("one thousand flowers") and is thought to be the first of its kind to be discovered outside the eastern Roman Empire. The dish was...

You may think that the electric car is a fairly new invention, but a Mr Thomas Parker had one in Victorian Britain. Mr Parker apparently built an electric car in 1884. To make a living, he electrified the London Underground and created overhead tramways in Liverpool and Birmingham. This...

Google Earth finds the "Battle of the Nile trees" which commemorate Nelson's victory In 1798, a British fleet commanded by Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson completely destroyed a French fleet anchored near the Egyptian city of Alexandria, stranding Napoleon's army in Egypt. The British took the...

Canadian tourist officials bizarrely used a picture of a beach in Northumberland, England's nothernmost county which borders Scotland, on a website promoting landlocked Alberta. Beautiful Beadnell Beach was used by Alberta's public affairs bureau in a £14 million advertising campaign. The...

Mr De Marco has lived in the same house for 100 years. Mr De Marco, who lives in Eastbourne, East Sussex, was born in Italy in 1902 but moved to England when he was seven when Edward VII was on the Throne and Manchester United won the FA Cup for the first time. When he turned 100, Mr De...

British comedian Omid Djalili has caused a row at the BBC after making jokes about a Jewish BBC chief. Djalili, who was born in Chelsea, west London and is of Iranian descent, has his own comedy sketch show on the BBC in which he plays a variety of characters. But he left an audience of 200...

A new survey has shown that British women are the biggest in Europe but, paradoxically, worry the LEAST of all Europeans about their size. On the other hand, Frenchwomen are the smallest in Europe but worry the MOST about their size. This could be due to the fact that French men pressure...

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are "feeble little nations", says historian David Starkey English historian David Starkey caused outrage in the Celtic nations on Thursday after describing Scotland, Wales and Ireland as "feeble little nations." David Starkey appeared on the BBC's Question Time...

For over 350 years, between 43 and 410, the Romans ruled Britain. But they only ruled the southern and middle part of the island - what they called Britannia - or what is modern day England and Wales. But they failed to rule over the northern part of the island, what they called Caledonia -...

Wimbledon, a suburb of south west London, is the home of world tennis (the modern rules of the game were drawn up in Britain in the late 1800s) and the location of the world's oldest, and most prestigious, tennis tournament. It is also the only one of the four major Grand Slam tennis tournments...

Until as recently as the early twentieth century, Britain was a harsh, unforgiving and poverty-stricken place to live (some people say that it stil is). It wasn't that long ago that a person - even a young child (huge crowds would still attend the public execution of 10 year old boys or girls...

It's that time of year again in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer unveiled the annual Budget and, with Britain currently in recession, Alistair Darling has unveiled several measures which he hopes will get the world's 5th largest economy back on track again. Most other countries' Financial...

Despite Britain suffering its worst recession since 1945, some authorities still think it is acceptable to use £2 million of taxpayers' money to pay for a 60ft tall head alongside the M62 motorway in Merseyside, which must resemble a giant that is rising out of the ground. St Helens Borough...

"Ve vere only following udders!" The quiet, tranquil English countryside is not normally the place you would expect to find a beast created by the Nazis which was seen as an unwanted reminder of German oppression and efforts to build a master Aryan race. But now it's inhabited by the auroch...

The Lions take on the Springboks this summer - and it'll be like nothing you've ever seen on a David Attenborough show. Earlier this year, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland played against each other in the Six Nations. Now those teams have merged, united as the whole of the British Isles to...

British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has been rushed to hospital. The 67-year-old, who is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, is undergoing tests at Addenbrooke's Hospital in the city. Hawking, who...

Ireland's national day is St Patrick's Day, celebrated every 17th March with copious amounts of drinking, and the wearing of the shamrock. Wales's national day is St David's Day, celebrated every 1st March (except 2006 when it was celebrated on 2nd March due to 1st March being Ash Wednesday)...

We are all agreed that Health and safety in certain workplaces is important. It is much needed in a work environment such as a building site or a mine. Most Western European countries and those of North America probably have some equivalent of Britain's Health And Safety At Work Act 1974...