10 most difficult England riddles

Until about 14,000 years ago, Great Britain was joined to Ireland, and as recently as 8,000 years ago it was joined to the continent by a strip of low marsh leading to what are now Denmark and the Netherlands. Great Britain became an island at the end of the last glacial period when sea levels rose due to the combination of melting glaciers and the subsequent isostatic rebound of the crust.

Nicholas Breakspeare, better known as Adrian IV (b. Approx. 1100 in the Abbots Langley) was the pope in the period from December 4, 1154 to September 1, 1159, the only Englishman on the Chair of Peter. He was the son of a monk Robert of St. Albans. Nicholas began his schooling at St Albans, but soon moved to France, where he joined the Congregation of Canons Regular of St. Rufus.

Following the defeat of the Parliament army at the battle of Worcester in 1651, the future king of England, Charles II Stuart sought hideaway on an oak to save himself from Cromwell's soldiers.

The spinning jenny is a multi-spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England.

The metropolitan counties are a type of county-level administrative division of England. They were created in 1974 and are each divided into several metropolitan districts or boroughs. There are six metropolitan counties, which each cover large urban areas, typically with populations of 1.2 to 2.8 million.

Joseph Jacobs was born in Sydney to a Jewish family. His work went on to popularize some of the world's best known versions of English fairy tales including "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Goldilocks and the three bears", "The Three Little Pigs", "Jack the Giant Killer" and "The History of Tom Thumb"

Eric Arthur Blair (1903 –1950 better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic whose work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism and outspoken support of democratic socialism. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

The Battle of Naseby was a decisive engagement of the First English Civil War, fought on 14 June 1645 between the main Royalist army of King Charles I and the Parliamentarian New Model Army, commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. Parliament’s New Model Army scored a convincing victory and within a year the king, Charles I, was a prisoner of his enemies.

According to the story, Lady Godiva appealed again and again to her husband, who obstinately refused to lower the taxation. At last, weary of her entreaties, he said he would grant her request if she would strip naked and ride through the streets of the town.

In 1519 Winchester was chosen as the capital of the kingdom of Wessex; and in 827, Egbert the first king of all England was crowned here. It then remained the capital and the most important city in England until the eleventh century and the arrival of William the Conqueror. He had himself crowned in both London and Winchester, and declared both cities to be capitals. However, by the fourteenth century the city had lost its place as the second most important city and began to evolve into what it is today - a small, sleepy, provincial city.