TOURIST PLACES

 LONDON

London is the capital of the UK and there are plenty of places to visit:

• Tower of London
• Tower bridge
• Buckingham palace
• Big Ben
• Parliament buildings
• Victoria and Albert's museum
  
• Natural history museum
• Trafalgar square
• Nelson's column
• London eye

EDINBURGH

Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland, there are a lot of well-preserved historical buildings and other kinds of tourist places: 

• The Edinburgh castle
• The royal palace
• The Scottish national war memorial
• The stone of destiny (also known as Stone of Scone)
• Palace of Holyrood house
• Princess street

STONEHENGE

Stonehenge is a stone structure which is more than 4500 years old, it is 16 Km away from Salisbury, a city which has one of the oldest cathedrals in the planet, the Salisbury Cathedral.

YORK CITY

York is a medieval city which has one of the most beautiful and oldest cathedrals in the world, the "York Minster" can be tracked until the III century, in the city you can admire windows which survived 700 years, and both the Shambles and the National Railway Museum.

UNIVERSITY TOWNS OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE

These are two of the most ancient and best universities in the world, there you can admire the medieval architecture and historical places, learn about anything that you like, or you can go to the sport competitions and events if you go in the correct season.

UK'S CULTURAL SYMBOLS

 THE UNION JACK

The Union Jack is the flag of the United Kingdom and is a combination of 3 flags, it was created in 1606 and updated in 1801 due to the addition of Ireland. As I said before, there are 3 flags in the union jack:

1. Saint Georgeo's cross: A red cross over a white bottom. Its history can be tracked until the XII century, when the cross was used by the templar knights during the crusades. The Saint Georgeo's cross is the flag of England and represent the attributes of Saint Georgeo which are strength, victory, bravery, purity and firmness.
   
2. Cross of Saint Andrew: A white "X" over a blue bottom, this is the Scottish flag and its history quite interesting, Saint Andre whose brother was Pedro the first Jesus's apostle, and when he was sentenced to die in the cross, he didn't want to die in the same way as Jesus because according to him, he wasn't worthy for that, the Romans crucified him in a special cross, that cross had the form of an "X".

   
3. Saint Patrick's cross: A red "X" over a white bottom, this is the flag of Ireland and it can be tracked until the IV century, in those years lived a men whose name was Patricius, was kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Ireland, he dedicated his life to preach the Christianism. At the beginning, the Irish people weren't agreed with the Brits because they made the flag red instead of green, the discussion continued for years but at the end it was red.

ROYAL COAT OF ARMS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

As the same says, this is the coat of arms of the United Kingdom and it is full of symbols and important figures for the country, it was adopted in 1837 and its symbols are:

• Lion, official animal of England.
• Unicorn, official animal of Scotland.
• Cardo, Tudor rose and Clover: official flowers of Scotland, England and Ireland respectively.
• "Dieu et mon droit": Motto of the English monarchs in French ("God and my right").
• "Honi soit qui mal y pense": motto of the garter order ("shame on anyone who thinks evil of it")
• Saint Eduard's crown
• Scottish royal crown
• Cardo's order necklace

HISTORY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

In the 10th century, the kingdom of England which was located in the British islands started having a constant conflict with other kingdoms which were in the same are, those kingdoms were the Nordic, Scottish and Celtics; but it that epoch it was just a small kingdom and the boom didn't come until the reign of Henry the VIII, who was in the power from 1509 to 1542. He improved the navy equipment and ran many expeditions, he wanted to make England the most powerful empire; he also conquered Ireland, where the Celtic kingdom was located and he severed relations with the catholic church to be able to get divorced.

During the reign of Elizabeth, I of England (1558-1603) there were many wars between Spain and England such as the religion wars, the eighty years' war, the war of Portuguese sucession and the Anglo-Spanish wars. We have to mention the increase of the exploration progress during those years, especially because of the participation of the English corsairs (for example, Francis Drake who was catalogued by the Spaniards as a pirate) and the colonization of the American continent, the firsts settlements (Gilbert and Roanoke) were founded in north America in this epoch. But one of the most important events was the foundation of the British Company of the East Indies, with this company Brits could monopolize the trading with India.

The British Empire grew a lot in the 17th century because the colonization of America, in the 16th century Brits had already founded two colonies in the American continent, but they didn´t survive too much. After fighting against the Spaniards, French and Dutch, the British empire finally could found and stable colony, Jamestown in the current Virginia, from there they made treats with the natives to conquer other people; in 1624 the Brits stablished the 13 colonies.

• In 1670 Spain gave to the British Empire Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
• The British Empire colonized the Bahamas and Barbados.
• The extraction of resources in the American colonies boosted the British economy
• The British immigrants was working in the extraction of resources in America for food, transportation and a living place, but at the end of the 17th century they started using  black salves from Africa who didn´t have any right or reward for their work.
• 1701-1714, the Spanish secession war happened, and the Brits took advantage of it, getting some territories in the current Canada, the San Cristobal Islands and Gibraltar.
• Scotland failed colonizing Panamá and agreed to join the British Empire.
• The Brits obtained territories in the zone of India, Canada, The Caribbean and the current USA.
• The Americans got their independence in the period between 1775 and 1783 because of the lack of British representation in the parliament.
• In 1788 the British Empire colonized the eastern half of Australia.
• In 1800 Ireland join the British Empire (it was called the Great Britain and Ireland Empire).
• French Revolution.
• Napoleonic wars, the Empire got territories in Africa and India.

During the 19th century the British Empire started colonizing and conquering many territories all around the world without any other powerful empire being annoying, because the French Empire was defeated some years before that. In the period from 1837 to 1857 (during the reign of queen Victoria) occurred the Opium wars, the stopping of Russian expansionism, the Crimean war, and the Industrial Revolution.

• 1857-1858, the Rebellion of India.
• The Empire conquered the whole India zone.
• 1861-1910, distribution of Africa among the most powerful empires of the epoch, without thinking about the African people.
• 1914-1918 the First World War
• 1922, the British Empire reached its bigger amount of territories in its history (they had territories in the 5 known continents of that epoch), after this year they would start losing territories.
• 1929, the great crash of 1929, the British empire didn´t have enough resources to support a huge territory and some of them got independent fast during the period between WWI and WWII
• 1939-1945 the Second World War, the Brits had a ridiculous amount of deaths and huge expenses during the war, because of this, the brits wanted help from the USA to avoid disappearing, the Marshall plan was initiated.
• All the British colonies eventually got independent, except for some islands

And now, we are in the present

IMPORTANCE OF THE BRITISH CULTURE

One of the most important contributions of the British culture is in the literature, that's because the novels were invented there! and some of the most important poets, plawrights or singers in the history were from the United Kingdom, we can mention "The Beatles" or "Queen", and the music genre called "rock" is from the UK.

But one of the most important historical events started in the UK, that event is the industrial revolution, a complete change in lifestyle of people all around the world, which happened in the second half of the XVIII century. This revolution made the actual world, the firsts factories and big scale industrial projects were made in this epoch and many devices were invented, for example the vapor boat, trains, and the blast furnaces. However not everything was good, because of this revolution the differences between rich and poor grew exponentially and the people became just workers for the owners of the factories, this event was the explosion of the capitalism and the usage of fossil fuels, of course those things changed the world forever as we can see today.

Other contributions of the UK's culture in the world are the football, cricket, the English language, which is one of the most important languages today and is used for international business, is the language of internet and basically it is used almost for everything nowadays. An interesting fact is that the letter font called "Times New Roman" which is the standard for most of the written texts around the world was created in the UK, by the newspaper "The Times" which was founded in 1785 by John Walter. And finally, one of the oldest universities in human history is in the UK, there are evidences that the Oxford university was already opened in the year 1096, it has been working since the medieval age!