American independence was more a great moment in US history. Over here it was just another Thursday, business as usual and making plans for the weekend.
British Empire was looking East towards India and beyond. During the American independence. A high percentage of everyday American farmers who fought the British during the War of Independence were actually Former British, French, and other European Soldiers left in America by their Countries after the end of the 7-year war.
It was a hypocritical war, basically not wanting to send taxes to England, but even now Americans abroad are expected to pay taxes to the US treasury, just plain greed.
The War of Independence was English gentlemen in the English Colonies fighting a German King on the British throne who was using a lot of Hanoverian soldiers.
What a lot of people don't realise with the voting for women is that about 40% of men didn't have the right either due to not owning property or land etc. The Act gave women the vote, but also extended the vote to include a larger proportion of men and started to become more fair across the population, but still wasn't quite there.
It was closer to 66% of men without the vote. Universal suffrage had little to do with the Suffragettes and more to do with the men who died in the trenches.
There were other things established at the same time, like raising the minimum age of marriage from 12 for girls and 14 for boys to 16 for both but with parental consent
Another thing that isn't well known is that in 1928, when women over 21 got the vote without previous restrictions, their share of the total number of people allowed to vote shot straight to 48%
It's bollocks, very England and VERY London focused..no Industrial Revolution, no conquest of India, and no Act of Union 1707 which was the event that CREATED BRITAIN FFS.
King John was Illiterate could neither read or write he was a third son & was never expected to achieve any high position?? I Otherwords he was another Prince Harry that got Lucky??
What's also not really mentioned is that the king petitioned the pope to have the agreement dissolved as it was signed under duress. The pope agreed and it was dissolved. It was only re-ratified by later kings. What is probably more significant is Simon de Montfort's later rebellion against Henry iii and the installation of a constitutional monarchy under a parliament that met regularly.
A signature can easily be forged, but a seal that is unique and different for each king (or pope) and that is destroyed on the moment of their death is far better in security. So having it sealed means it was not a fake one. It was really approved by that person.
The magna Carta only gave power away from the king to the Barons, Dukes and Lords it actually did very little for the peasants. The real changer was the Declaration of Arbroath which gave the Scottish people the right to get rid of the monarch if he/she didn't serve the people.
If it wasn’t for the French ships blockading the ports around New Orleans it would’ve been a very different story in the south and probably would’ve influenced the outcome of the conflict and maybe America would be a better place to live these days with the British abolition of slavery ….
My mother is 101 years old and when she was six her mother took her with her to a polling station. She was told that this was a very special day for women in Britain , as it was the first time all women over 21 years could vote. She has voted all her life and even succeeded in getting changes made in the law for the benefit of partially sighted people.
The American War Of Independence is actually ranked 2386 in the list of significant events in British history. Sorry JJ, but your biggest day is but a pimple on the behind of our long and varied story.
Like us with the '66 World Cup to be fair. We think the Germans are stewing about it but if you ask one of them who won the WC in '66 they haven't got a clue 😂
Actually at the time it benefitted Britain. The American colonies had never pulled their weight in paying for their own protection from the French, Spanish and Indians. The loss of America was a small backwater of the larger World War that played out after the Seven Years War. It spurred Britain to take over India which was vastly more economically significant than the 13 colonies.
British history is all about murder and pillage of other countries across the world. The UK owes most of the wealth remaining to it to slavery. That's what everything was built on.
USA charged the UK for their assistance in WW2, amounting to the equivalent of $50bn, in fact we paid our final installment a few months ago (in December) of $83mn. We had to continue rationing for a number of years after WW2, as the US was taking advantage of this wealth.
QUOTE.......Seventy five years ago, an agreement was signed in Washington for a US loan to the UK government of $3.75 billion repayable over 50 years. [1] The UK's final payments on this, and a loan from Canada agreed in March 1946, would not be made until December 2006
@@rosemarielee7775 Because they profiteered from WW2 and still think they came in at the last minute to win it. Deluded, greedy people, just like today.
The last thing to come off rationing was sweets, in 1950 I believe. The Daily Mirror's front page was a huge photo of a kid with an enormous bar of chocolate. My dad had a shop at the time and he said rationing was really difficult for most people.
@@rosemarielee7775 The US profiteered from both world wars. Fact. Most self centered country on the planet beyond doubt. All Americans are taught that any country outside of the USA is third world. That they are the most important people that have ever existed. From a country with virtually no history that's very telling. To Americans out there let me tell you a simple fact. Never mind what you are led to believe, without Europe as allies you are nothing.
The reason the American war of independence means little over here is that it didn't impact our lives. Unlike the Norman invasion, which still wrankles, although the Normans were Norsemen who settled in France, that's Vikings, so forgiven. And the threat of Napoleon was a threat of further invasion, by the actual French. 😅
An invasion in 1815 was not on the cards, France was still battered from the earlier capitulation in 1814. Waterloo was all about finally exorcising the bogeyman. For that reason, I think it still deserves to be top 10 psychologically but not in reality.
Talking about the end of ww2 and how Americans prospered whilst back in the UK the people remained on rations for years and it took until 1999 to pay back American loans from ww2.
Britain was also paying for and helping rebuild former Axis countries and those countries occupied during the War. The Allies pumped a lot of help and money to rebuild the West German economy when Stalin became a threat to the West.
@gavinhall6040 From a British history point it's just not hat important, Those colonies just weren't that important at the time and Britian was focused on Asia and Europe which took precedence. From world history and American history it's makes sense just not British.
@@RickyT15 Actually it is important, are biggest colonies at the time were in north America, our territory in Asia and Africa at the time and also the Carribbean Islands were not as large. After Americas independence did the British start searching elsewhere and start to expand. The 2nd British empire after US independence was when it got huge. If we hadn't had lost the American colonies we would have probably concentrated on Americans colonisation, the empire could have looked very different.
@connorparker6461 it wasn't about the size of the colonies that mattered, it was what was being exported from them. Americas at that time just was not important. If it was there would of been a bigger response and return later but that never happened cause it didn't matter. India was the focus of the Empire not the American colonies and what happened to India would of happened to America if it was.
Although WW2 was mentioned in general I think September 15th 1940 was pivotal in the survival of Britain. The success of the RAF in winning air superiority over the English Channel delayed the Nazi invasion pending. This was the Nazi’s first major defeat & demonstrated they could be beaten. I am convinced this was by no small means a beacon of resistance & resolve that shone into occupied Europe and the Americans.
The Germans couldn't have taken Britain even if they won the Battle of Britain. This has been wargamed by various serious organisations, and the Germans always lose heavily. The Germans just didn't have the naval resources to maintain a campaign in Britain. They might have landed a few divisions in Britain, but they didn't have the maritime logistics to keep them supplied.
@@jerry2357 If the Nazis has air superiority then that would allow their navy unfettered access across the channel and/or air drop supplies to a landed invasion force. The exact opposite of D-Day in my opinion. In any case eliminating the invasion threat real or not was vital.
@@colinpearce5856 Yes, but the Kriegsmarine had lost over half their ships, including most of their destroyers, in the Norway campaign. By 26 May 1940, Admiral Raeder’s chief of staff had to admit that the Kriegsmarine was unable to prevent the Dunkirk evacuation of the BEF. By September, the British defenders had 4 cruisers and 70 destroyers in home waters and could call upon the battleships of the Home Fleet at Rosyth. The Germans were down to eight destroyers with no heavy ships immediately available for support. At this stage of the war, the Luftwaffe were not very effective at attacking shipping. The Royal Navy made a series of raids on enemy invasion ports in a variety of weather conditions. Entering Dunkirk, Boulogne, Calais and Ostend, RN ships destroyed invasion barges with gunfire, night after night. On 11 September, every port between Antwerp and Cherbourg was entered and shelled. The Germans did not have the naval capability to sustain an invasion of Great Britain or resist the Royal Navy, no matter what happened to the RAF.
@@colinpearce5856 What navy? It was sent to the bottom of the sea at the end of WW1, under where the Royal Navy was waiting in case an invasion was attempted.
There are so many key points of the history of Britain, the Anglo-Saxon migration, Industrial revolution, abolishment of slavery, act of the union. Just to name afew.
One that few people are aware of is the mass migration of the Scotti tribe from the north of Ireland to the Western isles of Scotland in the 6th century.
What you never hear, is King Harold had been in the north fighting and beating the Vikings, the Vikings never invaded England again, he then had to go all the way down south.
Whoever made up the fixtures list for that period should be hauled before a committee, giving Harold 2 matches on the same weekend was dreadful, even if they were both at the Home ground...
@@ianbeddowes5362 The Tudors and the Stuarts were foreigners too, if you are talking about the English crown, Wales and Scotland aren't part of England. French, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch, German, in that order. It's enough to make anyone almost feel sorry for the English, ruled by 'foreigners' for almost an entire millenium now, and no sign of an English Restoration on the horizon...
after William the Conqueror invaded England he had the entire country inventoried, listing everything that was here. it was called "The Domesday Book" and we still have it, a nearly one thousand year old book.
Sorry @@jankinjuck9484 but I am conditioned by the BBC to believe that "the country" applies to the whole of the UK not just the bottom right hand corner called England and therefore I thought, given the topic is top 10 events in BRITISH history that clarification was necessary.
Abolishment of slavery should be top of the list, like wtf, britain has even had an anti slavery law in effect for nearly 1000years now. But the fact it isn’t even on the list is deplorable
Even before Great Britain engaged in the slave trade (centuries after the Africas, Persians, Indians, Arabs and Berbers, nearly two centuries after the Portuguese and Spanish, and decades after the Dutch and French) a quite peculiar form of English Protestant Christianity declared slavery not only morally wrong but against Gods Law. They then created the Plymouth Brethren, the Quakers and later the Methodists. This was a movement of the common people, the disenfranchised, exploited and powerless but this was the true spirit of the British people.
i agree it should be on the list but definitely not at the top, things like the battle of hastings, the end of ww2 etc etc all had effects on the whole population of britain and not just a minority
My grandmother lived in Birmingham during WWII, a place that was heavily bombed, she’d work at the war office during the day and then at night assist with incoming returning and injured troops at the train station, she would usually sleep in a bomb shelter. One morning they came out and their home was gone. I can’t imagine what she went through.
UK had austerity long after WW2. Rationing of goods ended in 1954. The UK’s baby boom peaked some years later than USA. I recall a shortage of school space in 1970s. There was a saying that “ Germany won the peace” as the postwar German economy was doing so well.
Paid for by us. Britain sacrificed EVERYTHING to defeat Hitler and sometimes I think we shouldn’t have bothered and we’d have had 2 generations of men still here and not screwed up by war.
No mention of solving the timeless problem of how to accurately measure longitude. Without it there would be no GMT and the establishment of uniform time measurement across the globe. We just take it for granted now.
Or the fact that until the trains went everywhere, we didn't even have a nationally agreed "time". Needed to agree a national time so that people knew when to expect their train.
i agree the chronometer would certainly be on my top 10, it was the atom bomb of its time and assured our naval supremacy. but these lists are always subjective and rather dependant on the authors knowledge.
The British have one very significant reason to detest Napoleon Bonaparte. Until the government needed to raise more money to fight France there was no income tax in the UK. That's one consequence of the Napoleonic wars we're still living with. The American colonies gaining their independence from the UK is obviously going to be a big thing for the colonists. For the British, the USA is only one of some 65 countries that gained independence from the UK. That they did it with violence set the precedent for American problem solving which continues to the present day.
@@patthepelvisfulmy views on Napoleon have changed. I rather wish the British had followed the French example and overthrown their monarchy too. Then, without British money to fund attacks on France, our present world could be a lot different.
@@countOfHenneberg I'd prefer to go back to 1066 and for the Bastard William to have stayed at home. I'd then have been born and grown up in a quite Norman commune instead of surrounded by all these rosbifs.
About the war of independence. British troops got no medals even if deserved as it was considered a civil war. I learnt this at 19 while visiting the blackwatch museum in Perth Scotland.
Whoever told you that Magna Carta was sealed instead of being signed because King John couldn't write, is very badly mistaken. Growing up as a Prince of England, John received the education of a Prince, i.e. the very best education in the land. He was also taught matters of government by Ranulf de Glanvill, The King's Justiciar (roughly equivalent to a modern Prime Minister). Seals were (and still are) used to authenticate or validate a document in place of, or alongside, a signature.
The Norman conquest and the french influence on the English language is also the reason we eat beef and not cow, pork and not pig, and mutton and not sheep, and venison and not deer because they where the foods of the french speaking aristocracy. Where the foods eaten by the english peasantry retain their english names like chicken, rabbit etc.
Glad you said the French "SPEAKING" nobility, because the Normans were of Norse extraction, (Hence the name of that region....NORMANDY, and had been in that part of "PRESENT" day France for just over a century, so not a lot of integration had taken place. For present day French to proclaim the French kicked our butts is a big misnomer!
Indeed, it's fascinating to look at the influence over the English language that the Norman conquest had, in particular over language in the law (the legal couplets like "aid and abet", "assault and battery", "cease and desist", "null and void", "all and sundry" and many more, come from the combined Anglo-Norman language roots). Judicial phrases tend to have Norman roots (judge, jury, court, magistrate, etc) as do words in the government and military (revenue, realm, battle, garrison, sergeant, defence) while common domestic words and place names have Anglo-Saxon roots (bed, chicken father/daughter, gate, man/woman ; place names ending in -ford, -ham, -bury, etc). This shows the relative status of the two languages, with Norman French being the official language of the ruling classes after the conquest, while Anglo-Saxon remained the language of the common folk and the everyday.
It’s interesting considering we didn’t have Rabbits in the U.K. before the Norman invasion. It was the Normans that brought the European Rabbit here, along with the Fallow Deer. Rabbits aren’t native to Britain.
I speak French and I have a french Skype friend, sharing french/english. I often say to her, that’s a word your William stole from us for the french!!! 🤣
@@Dave.Thatcher1One of my dim and distant ancestors, in 876 married a ‘Norseman’! Note that the aristocratic line in my ancestry was diluted into insignificance long ago! 🤣
@@vernongoodey5096 maybe you could afford to live without it but millions couldn’t. If it was ran properly it would be the envy of the world, at the moment it’s a joke as it’s been run into the ground
They were important, but the expectation was that the colonies would remain loyal to the crown. Indeed, most people were loyal to the Crown even up to the revolution.
The invasion of Britain by the Romans has been overlooked here, the Romans built roads, walls, villas and were the rluing power for many years. Hence the influence of Latin on the development of the English language. Viking invasions likewise massive in our history.
Could be that England hadn't been founded at that point, let alone Britain. What the Romans invaded was a collection of different countries. Æthelstan was the first king of England from 927AD, although the project had been started by by his grandfather Ælfred the Great (871-899 AD) That's why they refered to a thousand years of history
@@MrGreen1314 Tricky one, we know the term Britain was around long before Anne took the title in 1707. James 6 & 1 proclaimed himself King of Great Brittaine in 1603 - but parliament rejected the title. There's an argument that if the term Britain, or Great Britain, is being used to refer to the entire isle then it exists,but you can also argue that until Anne used the title that is when it starts. The point about England is that it had not been thought of (as far as we know) before Alfred the Great. It then took two & a half generations before England came in to being, before that it was many different countries.
I love our history over here, it's fascinating. I've just finished a book on day to day life in Elizabethan England (1558-1603). Though lately my favourite period of history to read about is the Victorian era (1837-1901). Great reaction, wishing you well
Surprised the Industrial Reveloution didn't get a mention. Lets face it, with out our empire the world would be a very diffferent place, India wouldnt have trains, USA wouldn't exist, Europe would be all German. I believe French was the official language in England at one point for about 100 years.
@@helenwood8482The modern world that we enjoy is a direct result of the industrial revolution, and has consequently lifted more people globally out of crippling poverty, than any other point in the history of humanity. I think we can be rightly proud of that.
@@helenwood8482 Wow, what arrogrance and ignorance said in one sentence. You can always go a live like English people did before the industrial revolution, without all the comforts, medicines and coventiences of a modern world that wouldn't have come to be without the industrial revolution, the birth of the modern world where we didn't have to rely of animals and people as power sources.
One of the things that came out of the Norman Conquest is making Slavery illegal. In 1080, William the Conqueror banned the sale of slaves to non-Christians. In 1102, the ecclesiastical Council of London banned the slave trade within England, decreeing “Let no one dare hereafter to engage in the infamous business … of selling men like animals.”. The one event that seems to be missing however is the Battle of Brunanburh. fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England, and an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin; Constantine II, King of Scotland; and Owain, King of Strathclyde. This is often cited as the point that England was created. Historians have said that "the men who fought and died on that field forged a political map of the future that remains, arguably making the Battle of Brunanburh one of the most significant battles in the long history not just of England, but of the whole of the British Isles.
As I recall, the only thing that suggests how King Harold died, is that his name appears on the tapestry just above where a body lays with an arrow in the head...but there is no suggestion that the placement of other names is representative of the figures beneath them, and there are apparently no other indications in the historical record that that is how he died... we just know he fell in battle.
According to the “Song of the Norman Conquest” (Carmen written in 1067) Harold was taken out by 4 assailants. He wasn’t killed by an arrow at least given that the Bayeux Tapestry records unarmored men running away with an arrow in their eye. Good luck finding out where all this took place!
In 1666 the area affected by the fire was two thirds of the city at the time, hence the Great Fire terminology. The official death figure is just 6 people, but the fire led to new building regulations and a move to brick instead of timber buildings.
Also the creation of the London fire bregade, as up to then insurance companies had their own fire bregades and if you weren't insured with them they would let your property burn
American independence shouldn't even be on this list lol. WatchMojo is obviously trying to appeal to their US viewers 😂 as if losing one of our MANY colonies, a less important one at that, is in the top 10 moments in our vast history 😅
Plymouth here, bombs discovered last week. Got evacuated from m and s a few years ago. It’s a very regular occurrence. Our house sustained bomb damage and is out of true by 2 inches top to bottom. The closest bomb was about 25 yards away. A previous house had a bomb drop in road directly outside it. The bomb map of Plymouth is really interesting. Available for free on google.
Number 1 should have been Trafalgar. Kind of silly this list doesn't have a single naval event on it. Without a powerful Navy, the abolition of the slave trade, the Falklands war, WW1 & 2, then Napoleonic wars and the Empire would have been very difficult for the British.
HENRY VIII bescame the head of the Church of England, thus linking state and Church. Move on a few years, a group of Puritans objected to the integration of the church and state. They believe the two should be separate. So they go onto a ship and went to the American colonies becoming the Pilgrim Fathers. So if it hadn't for Henry VIII American history would be different, and Americans wouldn't be celebrating Thanksgiving
11:05 The Battle of Blenheim (1704, part of the War of the Spanish Succession.) is considered more important than the Battle of Waterloo. The book, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World has Waterloo at 15 and Blenheim at 11. Hastings is 8th, defeat of the Spanish Armada is 9th.
Been watching you for a year now and as a Cornish man I can only say I love your videos and the way you give an effective considered outlook in your opinions is refreshing, keep doing what you're doing
The Abolishment of Slavery should have been top as it stopped the trade of slaves all over the world, including America, although the Americans don't like to admit it 😊
Couldn't agree more - while Britain takes a lot of flak over the slave trade, it was the very reason it came to end (in the way it was in the western world at least). The Royal Navy even blockaded African coastline to try to prevent any countries slaves ships from leaving. A slave was immediately a free man stepping onto British soil. It's something to actually be proud of, regardless of those trying to suggest otherwise.
Except that the Brits only abolished slavery in 2013 (or thereabouts). They thing they did in the first half of the 19th century was to abolish the slave trade.
It didn't officially become the nation state of GB until the act of union between Scotland & England in 1707. So much shown here is English & omits Scotland & Wales.
Man, some of the writing on the Watchmojo videos.. "residents there were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the British rule and had been waging war on the Brits for more than a year"... well, if you're in a war, then dissatisfied seems to be a bit of an understatement.
@marycarver1542it wasn't the King imposing tax on the colonies it was parliament, the king didn't have the to raise taxes. The tax was levied to pay for the protection provided by British troops, against the attacks by the French, Spanish and indigenous population.
Not to mention: The invention of the printing press The first vaccine The first antibiotic The first sterile operating theatres The first modern anaesthetic The first double blind clinical trials Invention of the radio Invention on the television Invention of the jet engine...
☕🧐🤌🇬🇧 M. British: "I'm sorry, we don't remember. For the you, your revolutionary war was the most important event to ever happen to your nation... For us, it was Tuesday"
pretty sure King John could write, but the magna carta was officially sanctioned using his official seal, that's just how it was done in those days. Love your vids.
Napoleon said that the English were a Nation of Shopkeepers. Big mistake. It was those "Shopkeepers that beat him at Waterloo. Someone once said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eaton (the Public School) But another voice once said that the Battle of Waterloo was not won on the playing fields of Eaton but on the village greens of England; giving respect to the ordinary man and his musket who is there at the front and fights rather than the senior officers who rarely are.
Indeed, however there was a French watchmaker with a learning disability who confessed to starting the fire. Despite misgivings about whether or not he was fit to plead and with the public wanting to blame somebody he was hanged at Tyburn. It turned out later that he hadn't actually arrived in London until 2 days after the fire started
The Battle Of Hasting also fixed English genetics. There are people with Anglo Saxon, Briton, Norman, Danish and Jute ancestry. The English part of me is Danish, because my paternal grandfather was a Yorkshireman.
There is an important aspect of the magna carta that was very important to the American revolution. In an attachment to the main document calked the Forests charter it is set out how some forssts would become commonage where freemen could forage, collect wood and pasture their small herds ; it also prohibited the king and barons from imposing new taxes without the consent of Parliament: no tax
I believe the battle of Brunamburh in 937 although forgotten was England's most inportant battle ...it is the battle that formed England.. and although nobody knows where it was .. we believe it was on the Wirral in Bromborough.. but other places claimed it.. worth a look
Henry VIII's break with Rome and establishment of the Anglican Church in the 16th century was about FAR more than ditching a barren queen for a fertile one! His father, Henry VII, was a usurper, permanently indebted to his supporters. Henry VIII likewise. At that time, the greater part of England's wealth was tied up in land and property owned by the Roman Catholic Church and its aristocratic investors. The King's selling-off of all this provided a massive land-grab for Henry's 'new men', and ushered in a period with a completely up-ended wealth and power dynamic in England, in Henry VIII's favour. It changed England for ever. 😱🏴🇬🇧
The reason that the american war for independence is so minor is because we have so many countries declaring independence from us that it's another tuesday (Chewsday) for us, our country is so old people forget that we had the norman battle of hastings in 1066 almost 700 years before the US was it's own country. Just let that sink in EDITED: Realised I put Civil war like a doughnut lol
Not a single moment - but the Industrial Revolution was the start of change for the whole world, that spread from Britain in the 18th-19th Centuries. Cultural, Political & Economic conditions in Britain allowed the growth of new processes & ideas that were not possible elsewhere. Iron & Steel production, steam power, railways & factories just some of the milestones!
Magna Carta was not 'instituted by King John'. He was forced to agree to it by his rebel barons who were unhappy with his arbitrary rule and he swiftly tried to renege on its terms. It was sealed because all official documents were sealed back then as a means of avoiding any issues with forged signatures. King John was perfectly able to write. The Black Death had far more long-lasting impact than the Peasant's Revolt. The Great Fire of London mostly affected London only so is not that influential (other than resulting change in architecture in rebuilt London). As for the inclusion of American Independence, this was a mere blip in the history of Britain, though it has a modern impact. Any such list created is arguable, depending on how we define 'important' and to whom. We could easily make a case for the unification of England and of Scotland as kingdoms, Simon de Montfort's representative English Parliament, the translation of the Bible into English, the failed Spanish Armada, the Glorious Revolution, the Act of Union, the Battle of Trafalgar, the industrial revolution, the Victorian social reforms (of mass education, prison reform, health, sanitation, slavery abolition), the Battle of Britain, the establishment of the NHS and the Welfare State etc.
I'm sure others have said but American independence is considered important to the US however factors that impacted our own UK history would, of course be seen as more important to us
Alfred the Great should have been on the list. He was the Anglo-Saxon King of of Wessex (southern England) who prevented the Danes from taking over the whole of the country in the late 9th century. He was an excellent general and ruler and without him, the country would have become Danish so this video would not have taken place. Please do some research on Alfred and his children - it was his grandson Athelstan (Noblestone) who united the whole of England in 927.
The monument is not on the site of where the fire started. I believe the height of the monument is the distance from the monument to where the fire started.
50% of modern English is Latin through Norman French including the names for food - cow in anglo saxon for the animal and beef for the food, almost all long words used in abstract thinking and discussion. In fact it's difficult to write or speak English without Latin based words.
1) Oliver Cromwell was a descendant of Thomas Cromwell infamous aide to Henry VIII 2) During the great fire Charles II actually went on a boat down the Thames and got hands on involved with putting out the fire, as a great partyer he probably thought it was a lark but it was an important turnaround in his popularity with the people. 3) had WWI not happened it could be argued that votes for women would not have happened as soon, women took up a lot of jobs that men used to do, had more independence because of a lack of men and therefore exerted more political pressure
2:31 "...had agreed to separate from England..." FFS, please give me a world where LittleEnglanders aren't plaguing the internet with falsehoods. The separation was from Britain. England stopped being a sovereign nation *69* years earlier.
London and the city of London are two completely different things. It greatly benefitted the ruling class to tear down and rebuild that area. The city of London is its own sovereign state, and the king/queen is subservient to it.
US independence had little impact in Britain, infact most of the country supported it at the time. It was the few incharge who were motivated by pride and didn't want things falling apart under their watch, things began changing when a new government was brought in who were supportive of it. Britain was rich enough to shake it off and focus on other things. Infact it was far worse on France, who joined the war to spite Britain, they ended up bankrupt and had a revolution of their own, bringing down the monarchy.
Hello JJLA. I went to school in London in the sixties and there is rhyme that we learned about it so we remembered the date. THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON SONG. and LONDONS BURNING it was embedded in us when we were young. Now most teenagers don't have a clue who WINSTON CHURCHILL is. Its pitiful
There was nothing beautiful about the end of the 2nd world war in Britain. As a child I played in the ruins of bombed buildings, unexplored bombs being a hazard. Greatly damaged men were wheeled outside in the sunshine in their wheelchairs. This was TEN years after the end of the war in one of the most important cities in the Midlands.
If you look carefully at the Bayeux tapestry you will see the man waring a crown was not killed with an arrow in his eye. The wording on the tapestry say this is where King Harold dies, but just shows a soldier, not a King.
I love how the Industrial Revolution that began in Britain and affected the WHOLE world is not in the top ten of important moments in British History. Too much focus on the negative things being important
In Hastings William wasn't called a conquer, he was called William the bastard. The conflict was at Battle a place near Hastings which is now used to describe a conflict.
4:30 remember that the Great Fire of London was in the city of London, aka the "Square mile" which is the modern financial district.As Jay Foreman will tell you, the city of London is a tiny part of modern London
1066 was the most pivotal moment in English history. The language changed, the ethnicity changed and the social structure changed. It is when the class system was created. Today all the English aristocracy can trace their lineage back to a Norman lord, while us poor Anglo-Saxon descendants still work under the yoke of the British class system.
The USA benefited hugely from WWII because it was largely unaffected by the fighting, plus it made money selling armaments to the UK (yes, we paid for every bullet) and US company subsidiaries in Germany not only continued to operate throughout the war but then benefited from Marshall Aid afterwards. And don't forget, for the USA WWII lasted for 3 years 8 months: for the UK it was just 3 weeks short of SIX years. Magna Carta was signed: to be valid a document like this also needed to have the royal Seal applied to give it legitimacy.
Yes, Britain put everything she had into winning the war, but it was the USA that took away all the glittering prizes at the end of the war. Britain got nothing out of the war but debt and total exhaustion of resources.
Don't forget that the original settlers in America were puritans who were exiled for being too religiously extrême. Most of the buildings burned in the great fire of London were timber construction which is why it spread so quickly.
The founding of the Patriot movement in parliament back in 1725 as a branch of the Whig Party. The conflict between Patriots v Tories was led to riots in England and full on Rebellion in the colonies.
A decent little fact is Zeppelin refused to play TOTP but became the intro music with the whole lota love riff. You should watch some of the white room, was a much better "alternative" in every meaning of the word than TOTP. Much love from Scotland 💙💙💙
The Tower of London HAD to be saved during the Great Fire. It was where the entire country's store of military-grade gunpowder was kept. If the fire had got to it, it wouldn't be so much a "flattened city"- more a new Grand Canyon.
It was not a truly popular thing when Cromwell had the King executed. It was reported in one book I read that the people were stunned in that it was as if a Saint had been executed.
American independence was more a great moment in US history. Over here it was just another Thursday, business as usual and making plans for the weekend.
British Empire was looking East towards India and beyond.
During the American independence. A high percentage of everyday American farmers who fought the British during the War of Independence were actually Former British, French, and other European Soldiers left in America by their Countries after the end of the 7-year war.
@@tk9780Yes, we were mostly fighting our own people. Crazy.
It was a hypocritical war, basically not wanting to send taxes to England, but even now Americans abroad are expected to pay taxes to the US treasury, just plain greed.
The War of Independence was English gentlemen in the English Colonies fighting a German King on the British throne who was using a lot of Hanoverian soldiers.
I wouldn't have added the American war of independence. More important events in British history
What a lot of people don't realise with the voting for women is that about 40% of men didn't have the right either due to not owning property or land etc. The Act gave women the vote, but also extended the vote to include a larger proportion of men and started to become more fair across the population, but still wasn't quite there.
It was closer to 66% of men without the vote. Universal suffrage had little to do with the Suffragettes and more to do with the men who died in the trenches.
There were other things established at the same time, like raising the minimum age of marriage from 12 for girls and 14 for boys to 16 for both but with parental consent
Have a guess at when black women were allowed to vote, in the USA. Then look up to see if you were right...
@@Tony-c7z9t Except in Scotland. To this day, you can marry at age 16 in Scotland without parental consent
Another thing that isn't well known is that in 1928, when women over 21 got the vote without previous restrictions, their share of the total number of people allowed to vote shot straight to 48%
Surprised the Industrial Revolution wasn't on the list. That changed the whole world not just Britain.
So was Henry the VIII offing his wives.@michaelrogers2080
Exactly! Changed the world
It's bollocks, very England and VERY London focused..no Industrial Revolution, no conquest of India, and no Act of Union 1707 which was the event that CREATED BRITAIN FFS.
I think UK had a lucky escape when we lost the war Independence it saved UK from a lot of things
@@alanwoodings7519 yeah.... JOE BIDEN!
The King could write. Magna Carta was sealed because seals were used, not signatures, on official documents.
Yeah he could definitely write
King John was Illiterate could neither read or write he was a third son & was never expected to achieve any high position?? I Otherwords he was another Prince Harry that got Lucky??
What's also not really mentioned is that the king petitioned the pope to have the agreement dissolved as it was signed under duress. The pope agreed and it was dissolved. It was only re-ratified by later kings. What is probably more significant is Simon de Montfort's later rebellion against Henry iii and the installation of a constitutional monarchy under a parliament that met regularly.
A signature can easily be forged, but a seal that is unique and different for each king (or pope) and that is destroyed on the moment of their death is far better in security. So having it sealed means it was not a fake one. It was really approved by that person.
The magna Carta only gave power away from the king to the Barons, Dukes and Lords it actually did very little for the peasants. The real changer was the Declaration of Arbroath which gave the Scottish people the right to get rid of the monarch if he/she didn't serve the people.
What Americans don't get is that the fight was between Britain and other British who moved elsewhere
and the french
@@graveperil2169 and the Spanish and Dutch
If it wasn’t for the French ships blockading the ports around New Orleans it would’ve been a very different story in the south and probably would’ve influenced the outcome of the conflict and maybe America would be a better place to live these days with the British abolition of slavery ….
My mother is 101 years old and when she was six her mother took her with her to a polling station. She was told that this was a very special day for women in Britain , as it was the first time all women over 21 years could vote.
She has voted all her life and even succeeded in getting changes made in the law for the benefit of partially sighted people.
The American War Of Independence is actually ranked 2386 in the list of significant events in British history. Sorry JJ, but your biggest day is but a pimple on the behind of our long and varied story.
Like us with the '66 World Cup to be fair. We think the Germans are stewing about it but if you ask one of them who won the WC in '66 they haven't got a clue 😂
@@Rob_ReedIf I remember correctly they prefer beating the Dutch?
They still have their bicycles.
Actually at the time it benefitted Britain. The American colonies had never pulled their weight in paying for their own protection from the French, Spanish and Indians. The loss of America was a small backwater of the larger World War that played out after the Seven Years War. It spurred Britain to take over India which was vastly more economically significant than the 13 colonies.
British history is all about murder and pillage of other countries across the world.
The UK owes most of the wealth remaining to it to slavery. That's what everything was built on.
USA charged the UK for their assistance in WW2, amounting to the equivalent of $50bn, in fact we paid our final installment a few months ago (in December) of $83mn. We had to continue rationing for a number of years after WW2, as the US was taking advantage of this wealth.
QUOTE.......Seventy five years ago, an agreement was signed in Washington for a US loan to the UK government of $3.75 billion repayable over 50 years. [1] The UK's final payments on this, and a loan from Canada agreed in March 1946, would not be made until December 2006
US prosperity grew at a time when every other major industrial power was in ruins.
@@rosemarielee7775 Because they profiteered from WW2 and still think they came in at the last minute to win it. Deluded, greedy people, just like today.
The last thing to come off rationing was sweets, in 1950 I believe. The Daily Mirror's front page was a huge photo of a kid with an enormous bar of chocolate. My dad had a shop at the time and he said rationing was really difficult for most people.
@@rosemarielee7775 The US profiteered from both world wars. Fact. Most self centered country on the planet beyond doubt.
All Americans are taught that any country outside of the USA is third world. That they are the most important people that have ever existed. From a country with virtually no history that's very telling.
To Americans out there let me tell you a simple fact. Never mind what you are led to believe, without Europe as allies you are nothing.
The reason the American war of independence means little over here is that it didn't impact our lives. Unlike the Norman invasion, which still wrankles, although the Normans were Norsemen who settled in France, that's Vikings, so forgiven. And the threat of Napoleon was a threat of further invasion, by the actual French. 😅
An invasion in 1815 was not on the cards, France was still battered from the earlier capitulation in 1814. Waterloo was all about finally exorcising the bogeyman. For that reason, I think it still deserves to be top 10 psychologically but not in reality.
Fun fact...Anchetil de Greye is my many times great grandfather
@@wadi_dog Yeah, Bloody French! absolutely :)
It did affect us actually, due to constant illegal westward expansion, and the associated defence costs, the 13 colonies were a money sink.
Talking about the end of ww2 and how Americans prospered whilst back in the UK the people remained on rations for years and it took until 1999 to pay back American loans from ww2.
We were also paying the money we borrowed to free all the slaves at the same time
Britain was also paying for and helping rebuild former Axis countries and those countries occupied during the War. The Allies pumped a lot of help and money to rebuild the West German economy when Stalin became a threat to the West.
I remember the planes dropping food into East Germany 1948? @@tk9780
We didn’t finish paying the US under the Lend Lease Act until 2006. The war greatly impoverished Great Britain and enriched the US.
@@sharonkay8638 and thus began the tradition of American defence contractors making bank in the name of "freedom"
Given that 60+ countries celebrate independence from the British empire I'm surprised the American revolution got in the top 10.
Most countries, mainly those in the Common Wealth, were handed independence in a non-violent manner from the British Empire.
The richest most powerful country in world history and you are surprised 😮. Okay for 🤨
@gavinhall6040 From a British history point it's just not hat important, Those colonies just weren't that important at the time and Britian was focused on Asia and Europe which took precedence.
From world history and American history it's makes sense just not British.
@@RickyT15 Actually it is important, are biggest colonies at the time were in north America, our territory in Asia and Africa at the time and also the Carribbean Islands were not as large.
After Americas independence did the British start searching elsewhere and start to expand.
The 2nd British empire after US independence was when it got huge.
If we hadn't had lost the American colonies we would have probably concentrated on Americans colonisation, the empire could have looked very different.
@connorparker6461 it wasn't about the size of the colonies that mattered, it was what was being exported from them. Americas at that time just was not important. If it was there would of been a bigger response and return later but that never happened cause it didn't matter.
India was the focus of the Empire not the American colonies and what happened to India would of happened to America if it was.
Although WW2 was mentioned in general I think September 15th 1940 was pivotal in the survival of Britain. The success of the RAF in winning air superiority over the English Channel delayed the Nazi invasion pending. This was the Nazi’s first major defeat & demonstrated they could be beaten. I am convinced this was by no small means a beacon of resistance & resolve that shone into occupied Europe and the Americans.
It also resulted in Hitler turning east.
The Germans couldn't have taken Britain even if they won the Battle of Britain. This has been wargamed by various serious organisations, and the Germans always lose heavily. The Germans just didn't have the naval resources to maintain a campaign in Britain. They might have landed a few divisions in Britain, but they didn't have the maritime logistics to keep them supplied.
@@jerry2357 If the Nazis has air superiority then that would allow their navy unfettered access across the channel and/or air drop supplies to a landed invasion force. The exact opposite of D-Day in my opinion. In any case eliminating the invasion threat real or not was vital.
@@colinpearce5856 Yes, but the Kriegsmarine had lost over half their ships, including most of their destroyers, in the Norway campaign.
By 26 May 1940, Admiral Raeder’s chief of staff had to admit that the Kriegsmarine was unable to prevent the Dunkirk evacuation of the BEF.
By September, the British defenders had 4 cruisers and 70 destroyers in home waters and could call upon the battleships of the Home Fleet at Rosyth. The Germans were down to eight destroyers with no heavy ships immediately available for support.
At this stage of the war, the Luftwaffe were not very effective at attacking shipping.
The Royal Navy made a series of raids on enemy invasion ports in a variety of weather conditions. Entering Dunkirk, Boulogne, Calais and Ostend, RN ships destroyed invasion barges with gunfire, night after night. On 11 September, every port between Antwerp and Cherbourg was entered and shelled.
The Germans did not have the naval capability to sustain an invasion of Great Britain or resist the Royal Navy, no matter what happened to the RAF.
@@colinpearce5856 What navy? It was sent to the bottom of the sea at the end of WW1, under where the Royal Navy was waiting in case an invasion was attempted.
There are so many key points of the history of Britain, the Anglo-Saxon migration, Industrial revolution, abolishment of slavery, act of the union.
Just to name afew.
One that few people are aware of is the mass migration of the Scotti tribe from the north of Ireland to the Western isles of Scotland in the 6th century.
What you never hear, is King Harold had been in the north fighting and beating the Vikings, the Vikings never invaded England again, he then had to go all the way down south.
Whoever made up the fixtures list for that period should be hauled before a committee, giving Harold 2 matches on the same weekend was dreadful, even if they were both at the Home ground...
The Normans were also Vikings - Norsemen.
@@SophiaPangloss Probably due to TV schedules. Bloody Sky!😁
Harold was the last English king, apart from the Tudors who were Welsh and the Stuarts who were Scots, the rest were foreigners.
@@ianbeddowes5362 The Tudors and the Stuarts were foreigners too, if you are talking about the English crown, Wales and Scotland aren't part of England.
French, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch, German, in that order. It's enough to make anyone almost feel sorry for the English, ruled by 'foreigners' for almost an entire millenium now, and no sign of an English Restoration on the horizon...
after William the Conqueror invaded England he had the entire country inventoried, listing everything that was here.
it was called "The Domesday Book" and we still have it, a nearly one thousand year old book.
Well, in two books. The Domesday (Doomsday) and the Little (or lesser) Domesday books.
the whole country of ENGLAND not the whole of Great Britain
@@StewartMcMutrieare you hard of reading? It says England in the comment.
@@StewartMcMutrie And the comment says England and doesn't mention great Britain once, learn to read
Sorry @@jankinjuck9484 but I am conditioned by the BBC to believe that "the country" applies to the whole of the UK not just the bottom right hand corner called England and therefore I thought, given the topic is top 10 events in BRITISH history that clarification was necessary.
Abolishment of slavery should be top of the list, like wtf, britain has even had an anti slavery law in effect for nearly 1000years now. But the fact it isn’t even on the list is deplorable
Britain hasn't even been a thing for 1000 years, and to this day, there still doesn't exist "British Law".
Indeed! Please look into this as well.
Not really, it didn't affect that many people.
Even before Great Britain engaged in the slave trade (centuries after the Africas, Persians, Indians, Arabs and Berbers, nearly two centuries after the Portuguese and Spanish, and decades after the Dutch and French) a quite peculiar form of English Protestant Christianity declared slavery not only morally wrong but against Gods Law. They then created the Plymouth Brethren, the Quakers and later the Methodists. This was a movement of the common people, the disenfranchised, exploited and powerless but this was the true spirit of the British people.
i agree it should be on the list but definitely not at the top, things like the battle of hastings, the end of ww2 etc etc all had effects on the whole population of britain and not just a minority
My grandmother lived in Birmingham during WWII, a place that was heavily bombed, she’d work at the war office during the day and then at night assist with incoming returning and injured troops at the train station, she would usually sleep in a bomb shelter. One morning they came out and their home was gone. I can’t imagine what she went through.
UK had austerity long after WW2. Rationing of goods ended in 1954. The UK’s baby boom peaked some years later than USA. I recall a shortage of school space in 1970s.
There was a saying that “ Germany won the peace” as the postwar German economy was doing so well.
Paid for by us. Britain sacrificed EVERYTHING to defeat Hitler and sometimes I think we shouldn’t have bothered and we’d have had 2 generations of men still here and not screwed up by war.
No mention of solving the timeless problem of how to accurately measure longitude. Without it there would be no GMT and the establishment of uniform time measurement across the globe. We just take it for granted now.
Or the fact that until the trains went everywhere, we didn't even have a nationally agreed "time".
Needed to agree a national time so that people knew when to expect their train.
And yet trains hardly ever arrive on time!
But you only know that because of GMT @@dankitcher1904
i agree the chronometer would certainly be on my top 10, it was the atom bomb of its time and assured our naval supremacy. but these lists are always subjective and rather dependant on the authors knowledge.
To be honest, I'm surprised the American War of Independance made the top ten. Significant event yes, but top ten?
"Keep blinking Harold, it'll work it's way out."
Ken? Is that you?
The British have one very significant reason to detest Napoleon Bonaparte. Until the government needed to raise more money to fight France there was no income tax in the UK. That's one consequence of the Napoleonic wars we're still living with.
The American colonies gaining their independence from the UK is obviously going to be a big thing for the colonists. For the British, the USA is only one of some 65 countries that gained independence from the UK. That they did it with violence set the precedent for American problem solving which continues to the present day.
It was the british choice, Napoléon is not responsible.
@@patthepelvisfulmy views on Napoleon have changed. I rather wish the British had followed the French example and overthrown their monarchy too. Then, without British money to fund attacks on France, our present world could be a lot different.
We should have taken a longer-term view and given them the tax breaks they wanted.
@@countOfHenneberg I'd prefer to go back to 1066 and for the Bastard William to have stayed at home. I'd then have been born and grown up in a quite Norman commune instead of surrounded by all these rosbifs.
As King Harold said--"Watch out for that mad bugger--he'll have someone's eye out in a moment !"
About the war of independence. British troops got no medals even if deserved as it was considered a civil war. I learnt this at 19 while visiting the blackwatch museum in Perth Scotland.
Whoever told you that Magna Carta was sealed instead of being signed because King John couldn't write, is very badly mistaken.
Growing up as a Prince of England, John received the education of a Prince, i.e. the very best education in the land.
He was also taught matters of government by Ranulf de Glanvill, The King's Justiciar (roughly equivalent to a modern Prime Minister).
Seals were (and still are) used to authenticate or validate a document in place of, or alongside, a signature.
The Norman conquest and the french influence on the English language is also the reason we eat beef and not cow, pork and not pig, and mutton and not sheep, and venison and not deer because they where the foods of the french speaking aristocracy. Where the foods eaten by the english peasantry retain their english names like chicken, rabbit etc.
Glad you said the French "SPEAKING" nobility, because the Normans were of Norse extraction, (Hence the name of that region....NORMANDY, and had been in that part of "PRESENT" day France for just over a century, so not a lot of integration had taken place.
For present day French to proclaim the French kicked our butts is a big misnomer!
Indeed, it's fascinating to look at the influence over the English language that the Norman conquest had, in particular over language in the law (the legal couplets like "aid and abet", "assault and battery", "cease and desist", "null and void", "all and sundry" and many more, come from the combined Anglo-Norman language roots). Judicial phrases tend to have Norman roots (judge, jury, court, magistrate, etc) as do words in the government and military (revenue, realm, battle, garrison, sergeant, defence) while common domestic words and place names have Anglo-Saxon roots (bed, chicken father/daughter, gate, man/woman ; place names ending in -ford, -ham, -bury, etc). This shows the relative status of the two languages, with Norman French being the official language of the ruling classes after the conquest, while Anglo-Saxon remained the language of the common folk and the everyday.
It’s interesting considering we didn’t have Rabbits in the U.K. before the Norman invasion. It was the Normans that brought the European Rabbit here, along with the Fallow Deer. Rabbits aren’t native to Britain.
I speak French and I have a french Skype friend, sharing french/english. I often say to her, that’s a word your William stole from us for the french!!! 🤣
@@Dave.Thatcher1One of my dim and distant ancestors, in 876 married a ‘Norseman’! Note that the aristocratic line in my ancestry was diluted into insignificance long ago! 🤣
Number 1 should be the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS).
Totally agree❤
Followed by the almost complete destruction of it a mere 76 years later
@@sirjock67i would say it has been in a slow decline from the off, incompetent self serving management and constant government interference.
Bloody money sink 1.5 million staff, what’s that all about
@@vernongoodey5096 maybe you could afford to live without it but millions couldn’t. If it was ran properly it would be the envy of the world, at the moment it’s a joke as it’s been run into the ground
The North American Colonies were not 'that' important to the U.K. back in the 1700s, we were far more concerned with France.
I think George III might disagree with that, it really upset him, made him quite mad, though he was heading that way already...
Gibraltar was seen as far more important.
They were important, but the expectation was that the colonies would remain loyal to the crown. Indeed, most people were loyal to the Crown even up to the revolution.
And it helped expand our horizons in other directions.
It was a loss of face and a loss of a dumping ground for convicts they used to send to Virginia. But not much else.
The invasion of Britain by the Romans has been overlooked here, the Romans built roads, walls, villas and were the rluing power for many years. Hence the influence of Latin on the development of the English language. Viking invasions likewise massive in our history.
To be fair, the narrator did begin by saying it was the most significant events in the last 1000 years…
Could be that England hadn't been founded at that point, let alone Britain. What the Romans invaded was a collection of different countries. Æthelstan was the first king of England from 927AD, although the project had been started by by his grandfather Ælfred the Great (871-899 AD) That's why they refered to a thousand years of history
@@kittling5427 won't it therefore apply that 'Britain' didn't exist before 1707 or 1801?
@@MrGreen1314 Tricky one, we know the term Britain was around long before Anne took the title in 1707. James 6 & 1 proclaimed himself King of Great Brittaine in 1603 - but parliament rejected the title. There's an argument that if the term Britain, or Great Britain, is being used to refer to the entire isle then it exists,but you can also argue that until Anne used the title that is when it starts. The point about England is that it had not been thought of (as far as we know) before Alfred the Great. It then took two & a half generations before England came in to being, before that it was many different countries.
I love our history over here, it's fascinating. I've just finished a book on day to day life in Elizabethan England (1558-1603). Though lately my favourite period of history to read about is the Victorian era (1837-1901). Great reaction, wishing you well
Surprised the Industrial Reveloution didn't get a mention. Lets face it, with out our empire the world would be a very diffferent place, India wouldnt have trains, USA wouldn't exist, Europe would be all German. I believe French was the official language in England at one point for about 100 years.
It didn't make it because WatchMojo are clueless.
The Industrial Revolution is nothing to be proud of.
@@helenwood8482give your head a wobble, it birthed the modern world! You wouldn’t be able to watch a video in your hand and comment on it.
@@helenwood8482The modern world that we enjoy is a direct result of the industrial revolution, and has consequently lifted more people globally out of crippling poverty, than any other point in the history of humanity. I think we can be rightly proud of that.
@@helenwood8482 Wow, what arrogrance and ignorance said in one sentence. You can always go a live like English people did before the industrial revolution, without all the comforts, medicines and coventiences of a modern world that wouldn't have come to be without the industrial revolution, the birth of the modern world where we didn't have to rely of animals and people as power sources.
One of the things that came out of the Norman Conquest is making Slavery illegal. In 1080, William the Conqueror banned the sale of slaves to non-Christians. In 1102, the ecclesiastical Council of London banned the slave trade within England, decreeing “Let no one dare hereafter to engage in the infamous business … of selling men like animals.”. The one event that seems to be missing however is the Battle of Brunanburh. fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England, and an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin; Constantine II, King of Scotland; and Owain, King of Strathclyde. This is often cited as the point that England was created. Historians have said that "the men who fought and died on that field forged a political map of the future that remains, arguably making the Battle of Brunanburh one of the most significant battles in the long history not just of England, but of the whole of the British Isles.
Act of Union, Peace Process in NI, establishment of NHS … all could be added
As I recall, the only thing that suggests how King Harold died, is that his name appears on the tapestry just above where a body lays with an arrow in the head...but there is no suggestion that the placement of other names is representative of the figures beneath them, and there are apparently no other indications in the historical record that that is how he died... we just know he fell in battle.
According to the “Song of the Norman Conquest” (Carmen written in 1067) Harold was taken out by 4 assailants. He wasn’t killed by an arrow at least given that the Bayeux Tapestry records unarmored men running away with an arrow in their eye. Good luck finding out where all this took place!
In 1666 the area affected by the fire was two thirds of the city at the time, hence the Great Fire terminology. The official death figure is just 6 people, but the fire led to new building regulations and a move to brick instead of timber buildings.
Also the creation of the London fire bregade, as up to then insurance companies had their own fire bregades and if you weren't insured with them they would let your property burn
Fun fact the great fire of london Monument is more deadly than the fire itself was
How so?@@theeighthdoctorpaulmcgann1789
American independence shouldn't even be on this list lol. WatchMojo is obviously trying to appeal to their US viewers 😂 as if losing one of our MANY colonies, a less important one at that, is in the top 10 moments in our vast history 😅
Well said. I just made a comment very similar to yourself. An unimportant war for us Brit's..
We still find bombs in my city,(Coventry) dropped by the Luftwaffe. The last one was 2000if bomb found 2years,ago
Coventry was one of the finest cities in Europe before the war. Tragic. Mass civilian bombing was a huge mistake.
Plymouth here, bombs discovered last week. Got evacuated from m and s a few years ago. It’s a very regular occurrence. Our house sustained bomb damage and is out of true by 2 inches top to bottom. The closest bomb was about 25 yards away.
A previous house had a bomb drop in road directly outside it. The bomb map of Plymouth is really interesting. Available for free on google.
Sheffield also a place where WW II bombs still keep cropping up.
Same here in Plymouth. One was found only last month!
The list should been No. 3, the Retaking of Falkland Islands, No. 2, Battle of Britain, and no,1 British Empire war on Ending the World slave trade.
The Falklands. No. Killing untrained young boys with no uniforms or barely any weapons , no. It’s embarrassing.,
@@phoenix-xu9xjnot all the Argintian troups where young conscripts in the Falklands conflict
Not The Falklands, come on.
@@faithpearlgenied-a5517 Okay, not the Falklands War. No.3 Formation of National Health Service and other Social services 1947
Number 1 should have been Trafalgar. Kind of silly this list doesn't have a single naval event on it. Without a powerful Navy, the abolition of the slave trade, the Falklands war, WW1 & 2, then Napoleonic wars and the Empire would have been very difficult for the British.
HENRY VIII bescame the head of the Church of England, thus linking state and Church.
Move on a few years, a group of Puritans objected to the integration of the church and state. They believe the two should be separate. So they go onto a ship and went to the American colonies becoming the Pilgrim Fathers.
So if it hadn't for Henry VIII American history would be different, and Americans wouldn't be celebrating Thanksgiving
11:05 The Battle of Blenheim (1704, part of the War of the Spanish Succession.) is considered more important than the Battle of Waterloo. The book, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World has Waterloo at 15 and Blenheim at 11. Hastings is 8th, defeat of the Spanish Armada is 9th.
Been watching you for a year now and as a Cornish man I can only say I love your videos and the way you give an effective considered outlook in your opinions is refreshing, keep doing what you're doing
The Abolishment of Slavery should have been top as it stopped the trade of slaves all over the world, including America, although the Americans don't like to admit it 😊
Couldn't agree more - while Britain takes a lot of flak over the slave trade, it was the very reason it came to end (in the way it was in the western world at least). The Royal Navy even blockaded African coastline to try to prevent any countries slaves ships from leaving. A slave was immediately a free man stepping onto British soil. It's something to actually be proud of, regardless of those trying to suggest otherwise.
Except that the Brits only abolished slavery in 2013 (or thereabouts). They thing they did in the first half of the 19th century was to abolish the slave trade.
@@gwaptiva the Norman conquest put an end to slavery in Britain.
@@gwaptivawe abolished slavery in the England in 1112 not sure where you are getting your date from
You just proved why other countries think that Americans think they are better than they are by not liking that America was only number 9.
I forget the USA having their own Country is a big deal to them but just one of those things to us Brits! Great list though and reaction ❤❤😂😂
Even bigger deal for the native Americans!
It didn't officially become the nation state of GB until the act of union between Scotland & England in 1707. So much shown here is English & omits Scotland & Wales.
And isn't it just tedious that the narrator can't use rhe term England & Britain correctly. Very sloppy.
Man, some of the writing on the Watchmojo videos.. "residents there were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the British rule and had been waging war on the Brits for more than a year"... well, if you're in a war, then dissatisfied seems to be a bit of an understatement.
Well said. I didn't pick up on that!
American independence is so minor over here I bet the majority of U.K. residents don’t even know the date of your independence (I had to look it up)
@marycarver1542it wasn't the King imposing tax on the colonies it was parliament, the king didn't have the to raise taxes. The tax was levied to pay for the protection provided by British troops, against the attacks by the French, Spanish and indigenous population.
pudding lane, which is still there today, apparently it was a baker..
Yep
Not to mention:
The invention of the printing press
The first vaccine
The first antibiotic
The first sterile operating theatres
The first modern anaesthetic
The first double blind clinical trials
Invention of the radio
Invention on the television
Invention of the jet engine...
☕🧐🤌🇬🇧
M. British: "I'm sorry, we don't remember.
For the you, your revolutionary war was the most important event to ever happen to your nation...
For us, it was Tuesday"
“It’s so small a woman could piss it out” is what he was supposed to have said.
The signing of the Magna Carta is displayed on the doors of the US supreme court because the US constitution is based on it.
"The peasants are revolting!"
"I know, I can smell them from here!"
The old ones are still the best😂
pretty sure King John could write, but the magna carta was officially sanctioned using his official seal, that's just how it was done in those days. Love your vids.
Napoleon said that the English were a Nation of Shopkeepers. Big mistake. It was those "Shopkeepers that beat him at Waterloo. Someone once said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eaton (the Public School) But another voice once said that the Battle of Waterloo was not won on the playing fields of Eaton but on the village greens of England; giving respect to the ordinary man and his musket who is there at the front and fights rather than the senior officers who rarely are.
The great fire of London was started by a baker in pudding lane. His name was Thomas Farriner.
Indeed, however there was a French watchmaker with a learning disability who confessed to starting the fire. Despite misgivings about whether or not he was fit to plead and with the public wanting to blame somebody he was hanged at Tyburn. It turned out later that he hadn't actually arrived in London until 2 days after the fire started
I always thought it was the Dutch who stared the fire? … dunno where I got that from then 😅
@@Matthew_Rushton That is very sad to hear Matthew. But it has happened many times where people have confessed to something they never done.
The Revolutionary War.... also called the Colonial Insurrection, or that skirmish that happened on the periphery of the (26th) Anglo-French War.
The Battle Of Hasting also fixed English genetics. There are people with Anglo Saxon, Briton, Norman, Danish and Jute ancestry. The English part of me is Danish, because my paternal grandfather was a Yorkshireman.
Same for me only my ancestors came from Derbyshire prior to the Norman invasion
@JJLA What's confusing about calling it the "American War of Independence"? Isn't that what you named the 4th July after?
The commonwealth banned celebrating christmas, dancing,and theaters too.Partly why people hated cromwell and his son and restored the monarchy
There is an important aspect of the magna carta that was very important to the American revolution. In an attachment to the main document calked the Forests charter it is set out how some forssts would become commonage where freemen could forage, collect wood and pasture their small herds ; it also prohibited the king and barons from imposing new taxes without the consent of Parliament: no tax
Crating Gravity.
Now the thing did exist before but the british gave it a name.
So technically, we did invent gravity.
Mavity ( Dr Who joke ). 😁
I believe the battle of Brunamburh in 937 although forgotten was England's most inportant battle ...it is the battle that formed England.. and although nobody knows where it was .. we believe it was on the Wirral in Bromborough.. but other places claimed it.. worth a look
Brunanburh
Michael Wood covers it on u tube
Henry VIII's break with Rome and establishment of the Anglican Church in the 16th century was about FAR more than ditching a barren queen for a fertile one!
His father, Henry VII, was a usurper, permanently indebted to his supporters. Henry VIII likewise. At that time, the greater part of England's wealth was tied up in land and property owned by the Roman Catholic Church and its aristocratic investors.
The King's selling-off of all this provided a massive land-grab for Henry's 'new men', and ushered in a period with a completely up-ended wealth and power dynamic in England, in Henry VIII's favour.
It changed England for ever. 😱🏴🇬🇧
The reason that the american war for independence is so minor is because we have so many countries declaring independence from us that it's another tuesday (Chewsday) for us, our country is so old people forget that we had the norman battle of hastings in 1066 almost 700 years before the US was it's own country. Just let that sink in
EDITED: Realised I put Civil war like a doughnut lol
Only 2 nations declared UDI. The US being the first of those.
Not a single moment - but the Industrial Revolution was the start of change for the whole world, that spread from Britain in the 18th-19th Centuries. Cultural, Political & Economic conditions in Britain allowed the growth of new processes & ideas that were not possible elsewhere. Iron & Steel production, steam power, railways & factories just some of the milestones!
Magna Carta was not "initiated" by King John, it was composed and imposed on him by the English barons who wanted to limit the powers of the crown.
Magna Carta was not 'instituted by King John'. He was forced to agree to it by his rebel barons who were unhappy with his arbitrary rule and he swiftly tried to renege on its terms. It was sealed because all official documents were sealed back then as a means of avoiding any issues with forged signatures. King John was perfectly able to write.
The Black Death had far more long-lasting impact than the Peasant's Revolt. The Great Fire of London mostly affected London only so is not that influential (other than resulting change in architecture in rebuilt London). As for the inclusion of American Independence, this was a mere blip in the history of Britain, though it has a modern impact.
Any such list created is arguable, depending on how we define 'important' and to whom.
We could easily make a case for the unification of England and of Scotland as kingdoms, Simon de Montfort's representative English Parliament, the translation of the Bible into English, the failed Spanish Armada, the Glorious Revolution, the Act of Union, the Battle of Trafalgar, the industrial revolution, the Victorian social reforms (of mass education, prison reform, health, sanitation, slavery abolition), the Battle of Britain, the establishment of the NHS and the Welfare State etc.
I'm sure others have said but American independence is considered important to the US however factors that impacted our own UK history would, of course be seen as more important to us
Alfred the Great should have been on the list. He was the Anglo-Saxon King of of Wessex (southern England) who prevented the Danes from taking over the whole of the country in the late 9th century. He was an excellent general and ruler and without him, the country would have become Danish so this video would not have taken place. Please do some research on Alfred and his children - it was his grandson Athelstan (Noblestone) who united the whole of England in 927.
There is a monument to the Fire Of London in Pudding Lane. The local tube station is named after it.
The monument is not on the site of where the fire started. I believe the height of the monument is the distance from the monument to where the fire started.
@@mollyevansyoung9255 Yes it's a position marker created for mapping purposes, typical of the scientific advances of the time.
It also killed more people than the fire did
50% of modern English is Latin through Norman French including the names for food - cow in anglo saxon for the animal and beef for the food, almost all long words used in abstract thinking and discussion. In fact it's difficult to write or speak English without Latin based words.
1) Oliver Cromwell was a descendant of Thomas Cromwell infamous aide to Henry VIII
2) During the great fire Charles II actually went on a boat down the Thames and got hands on involved with putting out the fire, as a great partyer he probably thought it was a lark but it was an important turnaround in his popularity with the people.
3) had WWI not happened it could be argued that votes for women would not have happened as soon, women took up a lot of jobs that men used to do, had more independence because of a lack of men and therefore exerted more political pressure
2:31 "...had agreed to separate from England..." FFS, please give me a world where LittleEnglanders aren't plaguing the internet with falsehoods. The separation was from Britain. England stopped being a sovereign nation *69* years earlier.
London and the city of London are two completely different things. It greatly benefitted the ruling class to tear down and rebuild that area.
The city of London is its own sovereign state, and the king/queen is subservient to it.
It may surprise some but in Switzerland women didn’t get the vote ‘til 1972.
As a Scottish person - these sound more like English than British. The act of Union that created the UK is not in the top 10.
US independence had little impact in Britain, infact most of the country supported it at the time. It was the few incharge who were motivated by pride and didn't want things falling apart under their watch, things began changing when a new government was brought in who were supportive of it. Britain was rich enough to shake it off and focus on other things. Infact it was far worse on France, who joined the war to spite Britain, they ended up bankrupt and had a revolution of their own, bringing down the monarchy.
Great list, great reaction as always . I definitely thought the Battle of Trafalgar was going to be in though
i love your reacts one of the few who looks stuff while reacting keep it up
Have you ever thought of watching the John Lewis Christmas adverts. They are brilliant and will have you in tears
Lewis's is an entirely different store to John Lewis, however, the Aldi adverts are the besr.
Hello JJLA. I went to school in London in the sixties and there is rhyme that we learned about it so we remembered the date.
THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON SONG. and LONDONS BURNING it was embedded in us when we were young. Now most teenagers don't have a clue who WINSTON CHURCHILL is. Its pitiful
There was nothing beautiful about the end of the 2nd world war in Britain. As a child I played in the ruins of bombed buildings, unexplored bombs being a hazard. Greatly damaged men were wheeled outside in the sunshine in their wheelchairs. This was TEN years after the end of the war in one of the most important cities in the Midlands.
If you look carefully at the Bayeux tapestry you will see the man waring a crown was not killed with an arrow in his eye. The wording on the tapestry say this is where King Harold dies, but just shows a soldier, not a King.
I love how the Industrial Revolution that began in Britain and affected the WHOLE world is not in the top ten of important moments in British History. Too much focus on the negative things being important
In Hastings William wasn't called a conquer, he was called William the bastard. The conflict was at Battle a place near Hastings which is now used to describe a conflict.
Sorry America, us Brits are indifferent to your war, to be honest most of us, see it as dodged a bullet.
4:30 remember that the Great Fire of London was in the city of London, aka the "Square mile" which is the modern financial district.As Jay Foreman will tell you, the city of London is a tiny part of modern London
Samuel Pepys convinced the king that pulling the houses down was the right thing to do
For quite a few years after WWII the U.K. was impoverished. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the country got itself back in its feet economically.
One major point in history is when William The Marshal defeated the Invaders welcomed in by the residents of London in 1217 when he was 70 years old !
He makes a very interesting subject to read up on
1066 was the most pivotal moment in English history. The language changed, the ethnicity changed and the social structure changed. It is when the class system was created. Today all the English aristocracy can trace their lineage back to a Norman lord, while us poor Anglo-Saxon descendants still work under the yoke of the British class system.
You would think the union of the crowns and the actual union might be up there. May as well rename it English history top ten.
The USA benefited hugely from WWII because it was largely unaffected by the fighting, plus it made money selling armaments to the UK (yes, we paid for every bullet) and US company subsidiaries in Germany not only continued to operate throughout the war but then benefited from Marshall Aid afterwards. And don't forget, for the USA WWII lasted for 3 years 8 months: for the UK it was just 3 weeks short of SIX years.
Magna Carta was signed: to be valid a document like this also needed to have the royal Seal applied to give it legitimacy.
Yes, Britain put everything she had into winning the war, but it was the USA that took away all the glittering prizes at the end of the war. Britain got nothing out of the war but debt and total exhaustion of resources.
Don't forget that the original settlers in America were puritans who were exiled for being too religiously extrême.
Most of the buildings burned in the great fire of London were timber construction which is why it spread so quickly.
The founding of the Patriot movement in parliament back in 1725 as a branch of the Whig Party. The conflict between Patriots v Tories was led to riots in England and full on Rebellion in the colonies.
A decent little fact is Zeppelin refused to play TOTP but became the intro music with the whole lota love riff. You should watch some of the white room, was a much better "alternative" in every meaning of the word than TOTP. Much love from Scotland 💙💙💙
The Tower of London HAD to be saved during the Great Fire. It was where the entire country's store of military-grade gunpowder was kept. If the fire had got to it, it wouldn't be so much a "flattened city"- more a new Grand Canyon.
It was not a truly popular thing when Cromwell had the King executed. It was reported in one book I read that the people were stunned in that it was as if a Saint had been executed.
The founding of the Kingdom of England by King Athelstan in 927 has been left out.