UK Facts

Gloucestershire Airport in England used to blast Tina Turner's 'Simply the Best' on the runways to scare birds away, running the experiment from 2002 to 2005.

Farmers in England are required by law to provide their pigs with toys!

People in the United Kingdom and Ireland drink more tea per capita than any other nation, consuming roughly 20 times more than Americans

Traces of cocaine were found on 99% of UK bank notes in a survey in London in 2000.

The United kingdom eats more cans of baked beans than the rest of the world combined.

Cheetahs were raced at Romford greyhound stadium in 1937!

Hoover vacuum cleaners were so popular in the UK that many people now refer to vacuuming as hoovering.

The definition of a white Christmas in the UK is for a single snow flake (perhaps amongst a shower of mixed rain and snow) to be observed falling in the 24 hours of December 25th.

In 2012, a squirrel in Fareham, UK got its head trapped in a decorative Halloween skull and scared the crap out of the neighbours.

In the UK Parliament, the Speaker of the House is forbidden from participating in debates or expressing political opinions, maintaining strict neutrality despite presiding over all discussions.

Some British police cars carry a teddy bear to console children after an accident.

A British teenager changed his name in 2008 to Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined.

In the UK, there's a guy named 'Major Dickie Head'.

Blue Peter pet, Petra the mongrel puppy, died two days after being introduced. A replacement was found.

Omar bin Laden (Osama's son) was denied citizenship in Britain in 2007 because "Omar failed to provide his father's permanent address".

In the UK, there's a bus service that's powered by poop.

After coming across a "very sweet" homeless man from Jamaica named Michael on a night out, Londoner Jenny Baker took to Twitter, and within hours, using the hashtag #getmichaelhome, had raised thousands of pounds so that he could return home to Jamaica where he said he would be "happy again".

A couple from Bristol who had trouble selling their house, found out they had an original Banksy on their wall, and received twice the asking price by selling the painting with a house attached.

US eggs would be illegal in a British supermarket because they are washed. British eggs are illegal in US markets because they’re unwashed.

During an Easter egg hunt in Surrey in 2016, about 30 kids spotted two men sprinting across a field with a police helicopter circling overhead. Without being told, the children lay down in the dirt and formed a giant human arrow pointing the helicopter straight at the fleeing suspects. Both men were caught. The crew landed to thank the kids — and the children shared their own Easter chocolate with them.

In 2012, archaeologists dug up a parking lot in Leicester, England, and found the skeleton of King Richard III — lost for 527 years. He was the last English king killed in battle, buried in a hasty unmarked grave in 1485. An amateur historian convinced a university to dig up the car park on a hunch. They found him in the first trench, six hours into a two-week excavation. The parking space above his grave was marked with the letter "R."

Muhammad has been the most popular baby boy's name in England for two years running.

Rupert Grint became an ice cream man after Harry Potter — not for publicity, but because it had been his childhood dream all along.

In 1990, the cockpit windshield of British Airways Flight 5390 blew out at 17,400 feet. Captain Tim Lancaster was sucked halfway out of the aircraft. Flight attendant Nigel Ogden grabbed his legs and held on for 20 minutes while co-pilot Alastair Atchison made an emergency landing. Lancaster survived with frostbite and fractures. The cause? 84 of the 90 windshield bolts were the wrong size — installed by a shift manager who'd done it by eye instead of checking the manual.