The United Kingdom Portal
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is 94,354 square miles (244,376 km2), with an estimated population of nearly 67.6 million people in 2022.
In 1707, the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland united under the Treaty of Union to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Acts of Union 1800 incorporated the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Most of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922 as the Irish Free State, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 created the present name, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The UK became the first industrialised country and was the world's foremost power for the majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly during the "Pax Britannica" between 1815 and 1914. At its height in the 1920s, the British Empire encompassed almost a quarter of the world's landmass and population, and was the largest empire in history. However, its involvement in the First World War and the Second World War damaged Britain's economic power and a global wave of decolonisation led to the independence of most British colonies. British influence can be observed in the legal and political systems of many of its former colonies, and British culture remains globally influential, particularly in language, literature, music and sport. English is the world's most widely spoken language and the third-most spoken native language.
The UK has the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), and the ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. It is a recognised nuclear state and is ranked fourth globally in military expenditure. The UK has been a permanent member of the UN Security Council since its first session in 1946. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the OECD, NATO, the Five Eyes, AUKUS and the CPTPP. (Full article...)
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The Judd School is a voluntary aided grammar school in Tonbridge, Kent, England. It was established in 1888 at Stafford House on East Street in Tonbridge, by the Worshipful Company of Skinners. There are 935 students in the school aged 11 to 18; the lower school is all boys, but of over 300 students aged 16–18 in the sixth form, up to 60 are girls. Judd pupils generally take ten General Certificate of Secondary Education tests in Year Eleven, and they have a choice of four or five A-levels in the sixth form. An Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills inspection in 2007 graded The Judd School as "outstanding", and in 2009, The Sunday Times newspaper ranked The Judd School as the 27th best state secondary school in the country. The Judd School is a music, English, science and mathematics specialist school. (Full article...)
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Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently proposing a theory of natural selection which prompted Charles Darwin to publish on his own theory. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the Wallace Line that divides Indonesia into two distinct parts, one with animals more closely related to those of Australia and the other with animals more closely related to those found in Asia. He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography". Wallace was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century who made a number of other contributions to the development of evolutionary theory besides being co-discoverer of natural selection. These included the concept of warning colouration in animals, and the Wallace effect, a hypothesis on how natural selection could contribute to speciation by encouraging the development of barriers against hybridization. (Full article...)
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Did you know -
- ... that neighboring British Sierra Leone and Liberia disputed their border, and the British Empire seized the disputed territory in 1885?
- ... that a yellow-spotted emerald specimen was found for the first time in the United Kingdom in 2018, when a wildlife photographer used Twitter to identify it?
- ... that Southern Water was fined £90 million for deliberately dumping sewage into the sea?
- ... that Liz Shore's nomination to be Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom was vetoed by Margaret Thatcher because of Shore's husband's political affiliation?
- ... that New Zealand composer Maewa Kaihau sold her rights to the song "Now is the Hour" for £10, a decade before it became a hit in the United Kingdom and United States?
- ... that the British embassy in Kabul was handed over to Pakistan in 1994?
In the news
- 2 May 2024 – 2024 United Kingdom local elections
- The United Kingdom holds local elections, as well as a parliamentary by-election in the Blackpool South constituency. (BBC News)
- 1 May 2024 – Rwanda asylum plan
- British authorities begin detaining migrants ahead of deportation flights to Rwanda. (Reuters)
- Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris announces the deployment of 100 police officers to the border with Northern Ireland amid fears that thousands of migrants might flee the UK in order to avoid deportation to Rwanda. Ireland also declares the United Kingdom a "safe country" so that asylum seekers can be deported back to the UK. (The Telegraph) (BBC News)
- 30 April 2024 –
- A man attacks people with a sword after crashing a car into a house in Hainault, London, England, United Kingdom, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring four other people, including two police officers. (BBC News) (The New York Times)
- 27 April 2024 – Elected British politicians who have changed party affiliation
- Conservative MP Dan Poulter defects to the Labour Party. (BBC News)
- 23 April 2024 –
- Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Rishi Sunak announces that he plans to increase the United Kingdom's defence budget to 2.5% of its GDP by 2030, totaling around £85 billion. (The Guardian) (Reuters)
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