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According to Warwick University, Stratford-upon-Avon is the 2nd most popular tourist destination in the UK, with American tourists alone spending £25 million in the town per year.
Coventry and Warwickshire have a stake in two of the most famous universities in the world. John Davenport, born in Coventry in 1597, became one of the pioneers of the New Haven colony in the US and helped to found Yale University. Harvard University is named after John Harvard, whose mother was a native of Stratford-upon-Avon. Her family home currently houses the Museum of British Pewter in the centre of Stratford. |
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17 Things Visitors to the U.S. Should Be Told in Advance
1. You NEED TO tip your waiter/bartender And if you don't tip, we might revoke your visa. 20% of your bill is good. 18% is okay. Anything below 15%? Congratulations: the entire waitstaff now hates your country. 2. Sales tax isn't included either Most states charge an extra 5-10% of the price in tax. So when you pay for that 99 cent bag of Funyons with a $5 bill, expect to get your body weight back in change. Which sucks because... 3. Our coins are pretty much worthless Unless you have a hankering for an oversized gumball. Or enjoy frustrating ten-minute conversations with clueless sales clerks about how, yes, the gold $1 coin is real. Just because nobody uses them doesn't mean they're fake. 4. We'll ask how you are, but nobody really cares Seriously, don't think for a second that the girl at the Walgreen's check-out counter has any interest in why you're buying four kinds of laxatives and a copy of Hola! Also, phony interest, enthusiasm, and hospitality is decidedly more prevalent south of the Mason-Dixon Line. You've been warned. 5. You have to pay to see a doctor And the 6hrs you spend at the hospital will cost more than your house. 6. You can turn right on a red light Yes, all of the people behind you slamming on their car horns can see the light is red. They can also see your right blinker is on and you're not moving, which now makes you roughly as popular in America as Kim Jong-Un. Or Juan Pablo, if you're more of an US Weekly reader. 7. The drinking age is 21 and we mean it If one person in your group is under age, consider your awesome birthday trip to South Beach officially ruined. Unless that person is female. And hot. 8. We speak one language, and expect you to know it Your country teaches our language in school so that we don't have to learn yours. Also, you're better at languages than we are. We can all agree on that at this point, right? I mean we mess up english, you know what I am saying? 9. America doesn't really do the whole 'Public Transportation' thing very well Maybe in New York, Boston, or Chicago. Otherwise it's a great way to involuntarily give your crisp new dollar bills to some of our tougher citizens. 10. Football is played by men carrying a ball in their hands Why? Hey, we don't see any chirping insects around your sticky wickets, so let's just drop it, cool? 11. Nobody cares about soccer Outside of Ohio and Oregon, ask the guy in the FC Barcelona jersey who his favorite player is, and he'll say 'Beckham.' 12. We put ice in everything Even coffee. In the winter. 13. Don't get out of the car when a cop pulls you over Unless you enjoy the refreshing jolt of a Taser. 14. Soda refills are free! If you didn't have to pay for ANOTHER 64oz Mr. Pibb, your country would be fat, too. Is this a pro or a con... I forget? 15. Food portions are huge What? Your grocery stores don't sell five-pound bags of pretzels and butter by the gallon? What is wrong with them? 16. The country is enormous And you thought you'd just pop up to San Francisco on your weekend jaunt to Los Angeles? Nice try. In the time it takes you to cross three countries back home, you won't even get to Bakersfield. 17. We have our own system of measurement based on arbitrary things from 500 years ago that nobody can explain We're aware the metric system makes more sense. We're also aware that we didn't win two world wars so the rest of the world could tell us 32 degrees was hot. We're stubborn but lovable. |
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In 1955, Coventry won an international peace prize for its dedication to peace and reconciliation.
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The Titanic's chief baker "fortified" himself with alcohol and thus survived the freezing water for 2 hours until he was rescued
The iceberg that sank the Titanic began its journey somewhere around 1000 BCE & finally the Titanic is the only Liner EVER to be sunk by an iceberg  |
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The late Stuart Cable's (the original drummer in the Stereophonics) mother is called Mabel
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Coventry has three twin towns in the USA. All are named after it and all founded by Coventry weavers fleeing poverty and starvation in the 19th century.
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Adam Ant's (Stuart Goddard) mother was a housemaid for Paul McCartney until he married Linda Eastman, the young Stuart also used to walk Maccas dog Martha. Macca gave him a signed promo copy of the Magical Mystery Tour which he still has.
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Charles II on the wedding night of his nephew and future King, William of Orange, watched the entire consummation whilst shouting encouragement from the sidelines.
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It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament
It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down |
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In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, legally, you must let them enter
In the UK a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet In France, it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon |
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Napoleon losing the battle of Waterloo. Not really R rated so much as PG-13.
In addition to the many, many reasons history books give us to explain why Napoleon lost the battle, what they leave out is the fact that during the battle Napoleon had a terrible case of diarrhea. You’d think this would get mentioned, as I imagine it’s hard to command an army when you are constantly sh!tting all over the place and becoming dehydrated as a result. Source: You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos by Rob Arthur. Fantastic book full of crazy facts like this. Others include how much Martin Luther King Jr loved to bang hookers (the lighter skinned the better, but never white), John F Kennedy’s reputation for being extremely quick in bed, and a great letter from Mozart to his sister describing a series of farts he let out while writing the letter |
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Half of all animal and plant species live in one country and nowhere else.
Half of British adults don't believe in evolution. Most clams begin life as males, but half of them turn female when older. Half the holes in the Green Zone Golf Club are in Sweden, the other half are in Finland. |
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The first woman to play golf was Mary Queen of Scots.
Agatha Christie was a keen surfer. George W. Bush was a college cheerleader. Bruce Lee was Hong Kong's 1958 cha-cha champion. The oldest dance still performed is the Austrian shoe slapping dance. |
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The oldest animal ever found was a 405 year old clam. The researchers killed it trying to work out its age.
Women look their oldest at 3-30 p.m. on Wednesdays. |
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The first potato grown in England, brought back from South America by Sir Walter Raleigh, is said to have been planted in the Little Virginia area of Kenilworth.
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Graham Sutherland's work Christ in Glory was said to be the largest church tapestry in the world when it was made for the new Coventry Cathedral. Completed in 1962, it has more than 900 different colours in it and is guaranteed for 500 years.
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Many of Warwickshire’s grand houses, such as Coombe Abbey, Clopton House, Coughton Court and
Baddesley Clinton, are linked to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It was at Coughton Court that arms, horses and ammunition had been stored, ready for the uprising that was meant to follow the annihilation of Parliament. And it was in Coughton’s great gatehouse, early on November 6, 1605, that the family and associates of one of the chief plotters were given news of the scheme’s failure. Baddesley Clinton was a refuge for Catholics and a hiding place for priests - it belonged to Henry Ferrers who also owned a building near the Houses of Parliament. When plotter Thomas Percy was appointed to the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, a mounted troop of 50 bodyguards to the King, it was the perfect excuse to find a London base to use in the plot and he arranged for use of Ferrers’ house in the capital. With Guy Fawkes posing as Percy’s servant to look after the London property, the plotters then began tunnelling towards the House of Lords. They stopped digging when they heard noises from above as an undercroft beneath the House of Lords was being cleared out. They were able to lease the undercroft and that’s where they stored barrels of gunpowder and covered them with piles of firewood. Warwick Castle was where Gunpowder Plot leader Robert Catesby stole horses after fleeing when the plan failed |
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'Nudiustertian' means 'relating to the day before yesterday'.
The word 'journey' is from the French 'journee' and once meant the distance one could walk in one day. Ths Swahili word for 'journey' is 'safari'. |
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The Express, the Telegraph, the Economist, the Times, the Star and the Independent were all London based stagecoaches in the 1830s.
The Solar System is travelling around the the galaxy at more than 500,000 miles an hour. A Manx shearwater flies over 5,000,000 miles in its lifetime. |
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The Ivanov experiments- basically some Russian scientist in the 1920s conducted experiments where he tried to make a “humanzee”. I think there were other secret soviet experiments as well where they tried with gorillas in a (failed) attempt to make a super solider hybrid thing.
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Coventry was voted second-best city in the UK for young adults in 2013.
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Noted trade unionist Tom Mann was born in Longford, Coventry, in 1856. Starting work at the age of nine, he gained fame as the leader of the 1889 London dock strike, and he became President of the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers' Union of Great Britain and Ireland in the same year.
He became Secretary of the Independent Labour Party in 1894 and, in 1896, he founded and became the first President of the International Transport Workers' Federation. He founded the British Communist Party in 1920, and became General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (1919-20) and its successor, the Amalgamated Engineering Union (1920-1). |
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Glass painter John Thornton, creator of York Minster's Great East Window - the finest work in stained glass in all of medieval England - was a Coventry man.
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Chris Rea wrote the the lyrics to 'The Road To Hell' on a piece of paper while in a car at the M4-M25 intersection (I know it well), on the outskirts of London, in 1988.
The lyrics are scribbled alongside details of an Indian takeaway, and a note to "phone Brenda". |
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Merchant and politician Dick Whittington - popularised in the folk tales and pantomimes in which he set off to London to make his fortune - was said to have been a member of one of Coventry's medieval craft guilds.
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Chuck Berry recorded his number one hit 'My Ding-A-Ling' at a Coventry dance hall.
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Damn.Had that on lined up.
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Chuck Berry's biggest-selling record My Ding-a-Ling - a No1 in the UK and USA - was recorded live during the Lanchester Arts Festival at the Locarno ballroom in Coventry,on February 3, 1972, where Berry – backed by The Roy Young Band – topped a bill that also included Slade and Billy Preston.
The writer EM Forster, who wrote the classics A Passage to India (which David Lean turned into an Oscar-winning film in 1984) and Howards End, died in a house in Styvechale in Coventry in 1970, at the age of 91. |
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