Great Britain 1918 to now

        Though victorious in World War I, the British Empire suffered huge casualties and economic dislocation. Independence movements in its colonies, fueled by repressive measures such as the Rowlatt Act (see Blair, 2008), eventually gained independence in Ireland (1921), India (1937), and Egypt (1920). Canadian troops on their way to war found Winnipeg bear and smuggled him into Britain. Christopher Robin Milne [1920-1996] named his stuffed bear ''Winnie'' after this bear, which he saw in London Zoo. His father wrote two books of poetry (1924 and 1927) and two of stories--Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928)--using his son and the stuffed bear as characters.

        In the 1920s, Alexander Fleming [1881 - 1955] searched for an effective antiseptic (Boston, 1997). So much was going on in his lab that it was often in a jumble. This disorder proved very fortunate. In 1928 he was straightening up a pile of Petri dishes where he had been growing bacteria. Some mold was growing on one of the dishes--not too unusual--but all around the mold, the staph bacteria had been killed--very unusual. He found that the mold was from the [5a] penicillium family. Fleming presented his findings in 1929, but there was little interest until World War II broke out. With two others he was awarded the [5b] Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945.

James Chadwick [1891-1974] discovered neutrons in 1932.

        John Maynard Keynes [1883-1946] revolutionized macroeconomics and the economic role of government with his book The General Theory of Empoyment, Interest, and Money (1936). His theories, published in the shadow of the Great Depression, encouraged governments to use monetary policy to balance recession against inflation and take responsibility for economic growth.

        The country suffered major bombing damage in World War II, but held out against Germany single-handedly for a year after the fall of France in 1940. The British Empire disolved shortly thereafter to be replaced by the British Commonwealth, a loose coalition of former colonies (Eckersley and Isted, 1996). German-born British physicist Klaus Fuchs [1911-1988] was imprisoned for leaking atomic secrets to the Russians. In October 1952 Britain tested an atomic bomb over the Monte Bello Islands near Australia, thus becoming the world's third nuclear power. Four days of killer smog in London in December raised the death toll to 4,700--triple the normal rate. In the 1950s novelist Ian Fleming [1908-1964] creates the fictitious British spy James Bond. Ten years later the novels become popular movies.

        In 1961 Peter Beneson, outraged at the arrest of two Portuguese students who toasted freedom, formed a protest group--Amnesty International--which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977. I Want to Hold Your Hand (1963) by the The Beatles launches a musical invasion across the Atlantic Ocean (Posner, 1997 and Dougill, 1991). John Lennon divorced his wife to marry Yoko Ono in 1969, and the next year the group disbanded. The miniskirt (6 inches above the knee) came into fashion in London in December 1965 and Twiggy became a super-model. Zoologist and surrealist painter Desmond Morris [1928-] stirred up controversy with The Naked Ape (1967) and subsequent books describing human behavior in terms of animal instincts.

Traditional Currency

a guinea 21 shillings

a pound (quid) 20 shillings

a shilling 12 pennies

a penny 4 farthings

        In the early 1970's Britain revised its traditional currency (see table on the right) so that there would only be 100 new pennies in a British Pound instead of 240 traditional ones.

Stephen Hawking [1942-]

Elton John [1947-]

        In 1972 British troops shot 13 thirteen Catholics dead at Londonderry, Northern Ireland on January 30--"Bloody Sunday". Riots had followed a civil rights march conducted in defiance of a government ban. The Irish Republican Army called a general strike the next day to protest the shootings, and an estimated 25,000 demonstrators rallied in protest at Dublin February 2 and burned down the British Embassy. Britain imposed direct rule over Northern Ireland two months later.

        [6a b] Princess Diana [1961-1997] married Prince Charles, heir to the British throne in 1981. After 11 years of marriage and two sons, William and Henry, she and Charles divorced. Then in August, she died on the streets of Paris in a high-speed traffic accident.

        The UK sent military forces to the Persian Gulf War.

        Soccer superstar David Beckham married former Spice Girl Victoria "Posh" Adams July 4, 1999.