Facts about England
England alone lost as many as 70 percent of its population, which passed from seven million to two million in 1400.
The British monarch is required to be a member of the Church of England under the Act of Settlement 1701 and is the Supreme Governor.
Loans taken out during and after World War II from the United States and from Canada were economically costly, but, along with post-war U.S. Marshall aid, they started England on the road to recovery.
England has been influential in the technological, commercial, and artistic development of cinema and probably second only to the USA in producing the greatest quantity of world-wide film stars.
BAA Limited runs many of England's airports, its flagship being London Heathrow Airport, the largest airport by traffic volume in Europe and one of the world's busiest airports, and London Gatwick Airport, the second largest.
The English oak and the Tudor rose are also English symbols, the latter of which is (although more modernized) used by the England national rugby union team.
At rugby league, the England national rugby league team competed more regularly after 2006, when England became a full test nation in lieu of the Great Britain national rugby league team, when that team retired.
England's high literacy rate of 99 percent is attributable to universal public education introduced for the primary level in 1870 and secondary level in 1900.
The economic prosperity of England has made it a destination for economic migrants from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The English monarchy was replaced with the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then with a Protectorate (1653–1659), under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell.
Restaurants and takeaways appeared in almost every town in England, and "going for an Indian" became a regular part of English social life.
The highest point in England is Scafell Pike, which at 3208 feet (978 meters) is part of the Cumbrian Mountains in North West England.
Historically most people in England lived either in conjugal extended families or nuclear families.
Chickenpox (or chicken pox), also known as varicella, is a common and very highly contagious viral disease caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VSZ).
England has an unrivaled number of media outlets, and the prominence of the English language gives it a widespread international dimension.
Successive waves of pre-Norman invaders and settlers, from the Romans onwards, via Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Norse, to the Norman Conquest, have all influenced the myths and legends of England.
The plague repeatedly returned to haunt England throughout the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries.
The itinerant preachers, called Lollards, Wycliffe sent throughout England, created a spiritual revolution.
Wales shared a legal identity with England as the joint entity originally called "England" and later "England and Wales."
England's economy is the largest of the four economies of the United Kingdom, with 100 of Europe's 500 largest corporations based in London.
England has no official anthem; however, the United Kingdom's "God Save the Queen" is widely regarded as England's unofficial national anthem.
William III of England encouraged the passage of the Act of Toleration 1689, which guaranteed religious toleration to certain Protestant nonconformists.
Historically, the highest level of local government in England was the county.
The Kingdom of England (including Wales) continued to exist as an independent nation-state right through to the Acts of Union and the Union of Crowns.
Many of the most important figures in the history of modern western scientific and philosophical thought were either born in, or at one time or other resided in, England.
Smaller denominations include the Religious Society of Friends (the "Quakers") and the Salvation Army—both founded in England.
England is home to the oldest existing schools in the English speaking world: The King's School, Canterbury and The King's School, Rochester, believed to be founded in the sixth and seventh century respectively.
Traditional heavy and manufacturing industries declined sharply in England in the late twentieth century, as they have in the United Kingdom as a whole.
Many teams and drivers in Formula One and the World Rally Championship are based in the England.
The oldest surviving girls' school in England is Red Maids' School, founded in 1634.
England was also divided into nine regions, which do not have an elected authority and exist to co-ordinate certain local government functions across a wider area.
Funded by a compulsory television license, the BBC operates several television networks and BBC Radio stations both in England and abroad.
In 1607, England built an establishment in Virginia (Jamestown), in what was to become the United States of America.
England is home to the two oldest universities in the English speaking world: Oxford University (twelfth century) and Cambridge University (early thirteenth century).
Thoroughbred racing originated under Charles II of England as the "Sport of Kings" and is a royal pastime to this day.
The "rackett" is the next most common Western instrument that overblows at the twelfth like the clarinet.
Oak, elm, ash, and beech are the most common trees in England, while pine and birch are common in Scotland.
The River Severn is the longest in total, but it flows from the mountains of Wales, and the parts which run through England are shorter than the Thames.
At the very lowest level, England is divided into parishes, though these are not to be found everywhere (many urban areas for example are unparished).
England was the world's first parliamentary democracy and consequently many constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin in England have been widely adopted by other nations.
The mainland territory of England occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west.
The Channel Tunnel, near Folkestone, directly links England to the European mainland.
Most of England consists of rolling hills, but it is more mountainous in the north with a chain of low mountains, the Pennines, dividing east and west.
The BBC is England's publicly-funded radio and television broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest broadcaster in the world.
The Principality of Wales, under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, became part of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542.
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, and acts as the "mother" and senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Sport England is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in England.
Up to around 6000 B.C.E., England was connected to Europe, and was easily accessible by nomadic hunter-gatherers.
England played an important role in the development of Western philosophy, particularly during the Enlightenment.
A number of other cities, mainly in central and northern England, are of substantial size and influence.
England became a unified state during the tenth century and takes its name from the Angles, one of a number of Germanic tribes who settled in the territory during the fifth and sixth centuries.
England is often mistakenly considered the same as the United Kingdom, or the same as the island of Great Britain, which consists of England, Scotland, and Wales.
The Church of England is based at Canterbury Cathedral and the Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior clergyman.
England was an important part of expanding and dwindling empires based in France, with the "King of England" being a subsidiary title of a succession of French-speaking Dukes of territories in what became France.
England is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, with 992 people per square mile (383 people per square kilometer) making it second only to the Netherlands.
The number of Africans transported to England was so great due to the slave trade that by 1596, Elizabeth complained.
England fought with its Commonwealth allies including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India, later to be joined by further allies.
The Kingdom of England was a separate state until May 1, 1707, when the Acts of Union resulted in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Most of these ancient institutions are fee-paying schools, although there are early examples of state schools in England, most notably Beverley Grammar School founded in 700.
Other major Christian Protestant denominations in England include the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church and the United Reformed Church.
An epidemic of catastrophic proportions, the Black Death first reached England in the summer of 1348.
Due to her geographic size and large population, the dominant political and economic influence in the UK stems from England.
Prior to the Acts of Union of 1707, England was ruled by a monarch and the Parliament of England.
England comprises the central and southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain, plus offshore islands of which the largest is the Isle of Wight.
England's Victorian era marked the height of the British Industrial Revolution and the apex of the British Empire.
The Thames is the major waterway in England, with imports and exports focused at Tilbury, one of the three major ports in the UK.
William's success at the Battle of Hastings (October 14, 1066), in which the Saxon king Harold II was killed, resulted in the Norman control of England.
A more reliable report dates from June 8, 793, when the monastery at Lindisfarne on the east coast of England was pillaged.
Ethnicity aside, the simplest view is that an English person is someone who was born in England and holds British nationality, regardless of his or her racial origin.
Saint George, later famed as a dragon-slayer, is also the patron saint of England.
After a brief return to Commonwealth rule, in 1660 The Crown was restored and Charles II accepted parliament's invitation to return to England.
England contains more UEFA five-star and four-star rated stadia than any other country, and is home to some of the sport's top football clubs.
The Roman Catholic Church re-established a hierarchy in England in the nineteenth century.
William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy) landed in England in September 1066 to assert his claim to the throne.
The England national football team are considered one of the game's superpowers, having won the World Cup in 1966 when it was hosted in England.
The English language, which is spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it remains the principal tongue, although not officially designated as such.
Cro-Magnons (the first anatomically modern humans) are believed to have arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago, and lived in the region that was to become England by 27,000 years ago.
The capital city of England is London, which is the largest city in Great Britain, and the largest city in the European Union by most measures.
Viking conquest of large parts of England established the Danelaw, a name given to northern and eastern England in which the laws of the Danes held predominance over those of the Anglo-Saxons.
A number of modern sports were codified in England during the nineteenth century, among them cricket, rugby union and rugby league, football, tennis, and badminton.
World War II, however, left England financially and physically damaged.
England would have the fourth largest population in the European Union and would be the 25th largest country by population if it were a sovereign state.
England's economy is the second largest economy in Europe and the fifth largest economy in the world.
Other mountain ranges and hills in England include the Chilterns, Cotswolds, Dartmoor, Lincolnshire Wolds, Exmoor, Lake District, Malvern Hills, Mendip Hills, North Downs, Peak District, Salisbury Plain, South Downs, Shropshire Hills, and Yorkshire Wolds.
England is home to the National Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St. Ives, and the Tate Modern.
The sugar-producing colonies of the Caribbean, where slavery became central to the economy, were at first England's most important and lucrative colonies.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, furthermore, brought much new immigration to England.
A revival of England's musical status began during the twentieth century with the prominence of composers such as Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, William Walton, Eric Coates, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius, and Benjamin Britten.
Edward VI of England, Henry's legitimate heir, was only a boy of 10 when he took the throne in 1547.
Much forest has been cleared for cultivation, so that by 2007, only about 9 percent of the total surface was wooded—in east and north of Scotland and in southeast England.
England is the largest and most populous constituent country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and is located to the north-west of mainland Europe.
During the ninth century, the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex came to dominate other kingdoms in England (especially as a result of the extinction of rival lines in England during the First Viking Age).
Her closest male Protestant relative was the King of Scots, James VI, of the House of Stuart, who, following the Union of the Crowns, became King James I of England.
The National Rail network consists of 10,072 route miles (16,116 route km) in Great Britain, of which the majority is in England.
Originally, England (or Angleland) was a geographical term to describe the territory of Britain which was occupied by the Anglo-Saxons, rather than a name of an individual nation-state.
English kings used England as a source of troops to enlarge their personal holdings in France for the duration of the Hundred Years' War (1337 to 1453).
UK legislation does not recognize any language as being official, but English is the only language used in England for general official business.
During this period from 1649-1660, known as the "interregnum," the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England came to an end, and the victors consolidated the already-established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland.
The central bank of the United Kingdom, which sets interest rates and implements monetary policy, is the Bank of England in London.
England's land area is 50,319 square miles (130,325 square kilometers), or slightly smaller than Louisiana in the United States.
England is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science.
England led the Industrial Revolution, a period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when technological advances and mechanization transformed a largely agrarian society throughout Europe, causing considerable social upheaval.
England ranks among the world's most influential centers of cultural development.
Many of the most important figures in the history of modern western scientific and philosophical thought were either born in, or at one time or other resided in, England.
The flag of England is derived from St George's Cross (heraldic blazon: Argent, a cross gules). The association of the red cross as an emblem of England can be traced back to the Middle Ages, and it was used as a component in the design of the Union Flag in 1606.
The United Kingdom (UK) comprises four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Within the United Kingdom, a unitary sovereign state, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have gained a degree of autonomy through the process of devolution.
Princess Elizabeth's father took over the job and became King George VI. King George led the country through the second world war but in 1952 he died of lung cancer. Princess Elizabeth was his eldest child. She became Queen Elizabeth II.