History Facts

On 7th January 1610, the astronomer Galileo Galilei turned his newly built telescope on a speck of light moving slowly across the clear night sky above the Italian town of Padua.

The dot he stared at was the planet Jupiter.

To Galileo’s astonishment, the planet was attended by what he saw as ‘four little stars’. They were in fact moons, in orbit around their giant companion.

The sight, at once, challenged the traditional Church dominated concept of the universe, in which all heavenly bodies were believed to circle the Earth.

Galileo’s discoveries were to lead to a full-scale confrontation between the Church and a revolutionary new view of the universe.

Orthodox beliefs about the nature of the universe were rigid and long established. For some 300 years, the Catholic Church and universities had accepted the theories proposed by the ancient Greeks.

In particular the beliefs about the universe held by Aristotle and Ptolemy. According to them the Earth lay fixed at the centre of the universe, with the heavenly bodies moving around it. Since no one could see flaws in the Moon, planets and stars, they were considered to be models of perfection, which revolved in circles, the most perfect of shapes.

The Church seized upon the Greek view as backing for its ‘divine’ mission – to help sinful humanity towards heavenly perfection. In support of this two beliefs were vital.

Firstly, the heavens should always be seen as perfect and secondly, the Earth on which mankind dwelt must be the stable centre of all things. Consequently, the theories that had been advanced by Aristotle ad Ptolemy supporting this concept became religious dogma.

By Galileo’s time, this dogma looked a little threadbare. A Polish priest and mathematician named Nicholas Copernicus had in 1543 suggested that planetary motions could be more readily accounted for if the Sun was placed at the centre of things.

In 1600, a radical Italian thinker, Giordano Bruno, was burnt at the stake for his heresies, one of which was his insistence that the Earth moved around the Sun. Galileo knew what he was up against, but he also knew the strength of his own scientific expertise.

In 1582, at the age of 18, Galileo had already begun the work that later led him to formulate several basic laws of motion.

Then in 1609, when he was a Professor of Mathematics at Padua, he heard of a Dutch spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey, who had put two lenses in a tube to make a primitive telescope.

Galileo made one for himself, which magnified just three times. He bought it to Venice, and sold the idea to the Venetian leader, the Doge, for it’s military potential – with a telescope, ships could be identified from a greater distance.

Within months, Galileo had made a second and a third telescope, which magnified up to 32 times.

It was this third, improved telescope that Galileo was to turn upon the skies in 1609-10. Discoveries came rapidly, each of them a further challenge to religious dogma.

For instance, he discovered there was nothing perfect about the surface of the moon – it had craters, mountains and plains.

The Sun, so far considered ‘inviolate’ had spots on it and Jupiter had its own moons, which did not circle the Earth.

Venus had phases, from full to new, which would have been impossible unless it was in orbit around the Sun, rather than around the Earth. Also, many previously unseen stars were now in view by the thousands.

Therefore, Galileo’s telescope showed convincing evidence that we live on an Earth that orbits the Sun, an Earth this is a mere planet and not the centre of Creation.

Copernicus was right, and Church dogma was wrong, as Galileo’s 1610 book, Siderius Nuncius, ‘Starry Messenger’ made clear.

Other observations were made and published showing that planets did not even move in circles.

On the basis of detailed observations by the German astronomer, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who was a colleague of a Danish astronomer Tycho Braha (1546-1601), it could be seen that the planets moved in eclipses or ovals.

Kepler devised three laws to account for the speed and orbit of a planet, supporting the theories of Copernicus and Galileo.

Although proving that the Earth moved was not easy for Galileo, as he had observational problems which cast doubt on his work.

Some argued that Galileo’s telescope was unreliable. Then in 1615, the Church took up the challenge. The doctrine that the Sun was the centre and immovable, said the pope, was ‘false and absurd’ formally heretical and contrary to the Scriptures.

Galileo was told to change his views. He retired from public life and only ventured back into print in 1632 in support of Coppernicus with his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems.

As a result of this heresy, Galileo was in 1633 summoned to Rome to recant. Threatened with torture, he did so – while muttering some accounts say – ‘E pur si muove’ (‘And yet it moves’).

He remained under virtual house arrest until his death in 1642, though this did not prevent the spread of his ideas.

Religious dogma had begun its retreat in the face of science, but it was another 359 years before, in 1992, Pope John Paul II formally rehabilitated Galileo, blaming his conviction for heresy on ‘tragic mutual incomprehension’.

After ten years of murderous toil that exacted a death toll of thousands of labourers, the Great Wall  lay across the northern boundary of China like an enormous serpent. 

Coiled along the land’s natural contours, it stretched westward from the Yellow Sea over mountains, through deserts and across farmland to the edge of Tibet.

The wall was built by the command of the first emperor of a united China.  Shi Huand Di, whose state of Qin had overcome the other Chinese states and united them under his rule. 

In 214 BC the emperor sent his general, Men T’ien to the empire’s northern frontier with an army of 300,000 workmen and an uncounted number of political prisoners to start building a chain of fortifications.

Hundreds of miles of fortifications had been built by China’s independent states.  The task of Meng T’ien and his engineers was to strengthen or rebuild these structures and construct a further 500 miles (80okm)  of wall to link them.

Work progressed at remorseless speed, new teams of labourers were constantly being thrown into the frenzy of the building work. 

The human cost of building the wall was enormous and the peasants had to pay. 

From every family of five at least two were dragged off to work on the wall, or similar grandiose state projects – a drain on manpower that made it almost impossible for families to run their farms. 

Convicts sentenced to hard labour on the wall were marched hundreds of miles northward in chains and iron collars, they would drop with fatigue before reaching the wall.

Many of the conscripts died on the march. Those who survived the journey were housed in inadequate camps and put to work in blazing sun, driving rain, stinging hailstorms and temperatures that swung from 35 degrees at the height of summer to -21 degrees in winter.

Food was desperately short.  The barren land could not grow sufficient crops and supplies had to be carried from huge distances by convoys of pack animals or manhandled in barges up swiftly flowing rivers.  Much of the food was stolen by bandits, lost or eaten during the journey.  Starvation accelerated an already high death rate and led to outbreaks of violence between workers and overseers.

Many of those who died of exhaustion or malnutrition were thrown into trenches dug out for foundation or buried inside the wall to act as guardian spirits against demons of the north, who it was believed were angered by the building of the enormous fortification.

The construction gangs started in the north-east and moved westward.  First to be built were the watchtowers, most of them 40 f high on a 40ft sq base.  Never farther apart than the length of two arrow shots, so that no part of the wall would be out of range of the archers.  They were placed at strategic points along the wall such as hilltops or valley entrances.  Between the towers ran a 20 ft high rampart to keep out potential invaders and demons.

Where the rock was available, workers laid a foundation or granite blocks – some of them as large as 14ft (4.3m) by 4 ft (1.2m).  On top of this was built an outer frame of clay bricks or stone.

The mortar used for this in some sections of the wall was said to be so hard it was impossible to drive a nail into it, the formula for making it has long been lost.  The central cavity in the wall was filled with earth and rubble which was then pounded solid.  Ox carts, handcarts and donkeys laden with baskets brought materials from the surrounding areas.

In every area, building of the wall posed different problems.  At the eastern end near a town called Shan Hai Kuan, the wall had to extend into the sea for a short distance, so boats were loaded with huge rocks and sunk to provide a foundation. 

The central section of the wall was to run through the fertile Ordos region, home of the hostile Hsiung-nu nomads, here the tribesmen had to be driven from the area before building could begin.

In some regions, the hills over which the wall had to run were so steep that ox-carts and handcarts  could no longer be used to carry the stone.  Instead men had to carry loads of some 110lb (50kg) on their backs or in baskets suspended from a pole.  On narrow paths materials were passed along a human chain.

Rocks that were too heavy for a man to carry would be rolled on logs or manhandled with levers inch by inch up the steeps slopes.  Some areas that later generations could not believe that men had carried the building materials, claimed that goats must have been used.

Large section of the wall were built in areas covered with fine, yellow loess soil which was a poor building material.  Here builders mixed the soil with water and poured it into wooden frames.  As soon as it started to dry it was rammed into a solid structure to form the wall, which was then faced with stone or brick if they were available.

Some areas the earth was simply cut away to leave a strip of loess as a rampart: these sections of the wall proved far less durable than those in the rocky north-eastern areas.  In the sandy areas of the Gobi Desert the wall was built by alternating layers of sand and pebbles with layers of desert grass and tamarisk twigs.

Once completed and fully manned the wall proved a formidable bastion.  Each of the thousands of towers along it could accommodate a small  garrison, stocked when possible with enough provisions to withstand a four month siege.

The line between the Chinese empire and the lands of its nomadic neighbours to the north had been clearly drawn.

The great bastion is known to the Chinese as Wanli Changcheng, or 10,000 Li Long Wall and it stretches across northern China from the Yellow Sea to central Asia, extending for 1500 miles (2400 km) from west to east and totalling 4000 (6400km) with its many branches. 

The wall is the largest structure built by human hands and is the only man made construction visible from space.

The British women’s suffrage movement can be traced back to 1792, with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’. 

In this book she argued for the rights of women in education and the professions.  Her struggle was taken up by campaigners such as Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who after being prevented from entering medical school, studied privately and in 1865 became the first woman doctor to qualify in Britain.

Women’s issues also concentrated on the lack of rights for married women, which was upheld by the existing legal system.  The 18th century jurist Sir William Blackstone put his view forthrightly: ‘The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband’.

In 1832, the Great Reform Act gave the vote to about half a million more men – one in five of the male population – but it excluded women from the vote.  In 1867, the Second Reform Act increased the vote to about 2.5 million male householders, out of a population of 22 million.  This inspired a new wave of protests, aided by many writers and philosophers, such as John Stuart Mill.

By the 1890s the suffrage movement was well established and had expanded from a small group of radical thinkers to embrace a growing force of women from all sections of society. 

The movement in Britain was greatly encouraged by events in other countries.  In America, as the slavery debate grew more heated in the 19th century, people became aware that women as well as slaves were oppressed. 

Lucretia Mott founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and joined forces with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to organise the first American convention on women’s rights which was held at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848.  There was a flowering of women’s groups across America, and in 1890 they formed the National American Women’s Suffrage Association.

In 1893, New Zealand became the first country to enfranchise women and by 1896 four American states – Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming – had given women the vote.  By the end of the century women had also been enfranchised in most of Australia and in the Isle of Man.

Activists from New Zealand, Australia and America advised their British counterparts on strategy and gave speeches outlining how the vote had improved women’s living and working conditions in their own countries.

Throughout their campaign, the women’s suffrage organisations met with strong opposition from the Press, Parliament, leading professionals and the Church.  But the opposition was not restricted to men; many women opposed the movement, feeling it threatened society’s traditional values. 

A group known as the ‘Ants’ pointed to the ‘defective temperament and intellect of women’.  They described women as illogical, emotional, fickle, fragile and absorbed with trivial and domestic matters.  A woman’s proper place, they said, was in the home.

Politics was seen as an unfeminine pastime that would corrupt women and kill chivalry.  To involve women in politics. Prime Minister William Gladstone said; ‘would trespass upon their delicacy, their purity, their refinement, the elevation of their whole nature’.

Other worries underlaid MP’s opposition to the suffragettes.  Politicians were concerned over an association between the women’s suffrage claim and birth control, fearing that if contraception were to spread it would endanger the country’s capacity to raise future armies.  Many British Soldiers had been killed during the recent Anglo-Boar war and women greatly outnumbered men at the beginning of the 20th century.

Support for the women’s franchise was also a risk for any political party hoping to win at the polls.  Indeed, strong opposition from the government continued until the outbreak of war in 1914.

The suffragettes called a truce to their campaigning during the First World War, but it was clear that they would step up their efforts as soon as the war was over.  This put pressure on the government to make concessions.

The initial effect of the war was to raise the status of the fighting man and to substantiate the idea that a woman’s most important role was to rear men for future armies.  But opinion changed as women took the places of fighting men in industry and public service, the number of women employed in Britain rose by more than a million. 

This played a significant part in challenging traditional stereo-types and put women in a much stronger bargaining position for getting the vote.  In France, women played an enormous part in the war effort, despite this they were not granted the vote until after the Second World War in 1945.

In February 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted the vote to women over 30, subject to certain economic and educational qualifications.  However, young working class women, although they received high praise for their war work, were still denied the vote.  In the election of 1918, some 8.5 million women were able to vote.

Among the candidates were 17 women of whom just one was elected: in Dublin, Countess Constance Markiewicz – the  ‘Red Countess’, one of the personalities of the Easter Rising – triumphed for Sinn Fein, but she did not take up her seat for political reasons.

The first woman to sit in the British parliament was Nancy Lady Astor, who became MP for Plymouth in 1919.  The same year saw the introduction of the Sex Disqualification Removal Act, which made available many professions to women and entitled them to serve on juries.  In 1928, the voting age for women was reduced to 21, the same age as men and three years later 15 women became Members of Parliament.

Despite the fact that four American states had enfranchised women by 1896, it was not until 1920 that the United States as a whole gave women the vote.  The women voters of New Zealand, enfranchised in 1893, did not elect their first woman MP, Elizabeth McCombs until 1933. Finland in 1906 became the first European country to give women the vote, followed by Norway in 1907.

Women were enfranchised in Germany in 1918, Spain in 1932, France, Italy and Japan in 1945.  In 1902 the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance was founded and organised conferences in Washington (1902) Berlin (1904) and Copenhagen (1906). 

The American feminist Susan B Anthony presided over the organisation with the English suffragist Millicent Fawcett as a senior executive.  Although the WSPU was banned from joining, it had a great deal of international support – and abuse. The term ‘suffragettes’ was first used by the London Daily Mail in 1906 as a derogatory label for women with WSPU.

The enfranchisement of women has been much slower in other countries.  Switzerland did not give votes to women until 1971, Jordan 1974 and Lichtenstein in 1984.  In some countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, women are still not allowed to vote.

In Britain, a mother and two of her daughters were in the vanguard of the growing suffragette movement.  Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the militant campaign for women’s right to vote, was born in Manchester in 1858.  She attended her first suffrage meeting at 14 and at 21 she married Richard Pankhurst, a radical reform lawyer.

She founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903 and was imprisoned many times for her protests.  She died in London in 1928.

Christabel Pankhurst, the elder daughter of Emmeline, was born in 1880.  After graduating as a lawyer, she was appointed organising secretary of the WSPU and soon became a strong public speaker.

To escape arrest for conspiracy in 1912, she fled to Paris, where she edited The Suffragette newspaper.  In 1936, she was made a Dame of the British Empire and she died in the United States in 1958.

Sylvia Pankhurst, the second daughter of Emmeline was born in 1882.  In 1912 she set up the East London Federation of WSPU. Her socialist views caused a split between her federation and the WSPU in 1914. After 1918, she campaigned for a number of international causes, dying in Ethiopia in 1960.

The National Trust was founded by the vision of three pioneers on 12 January 1895, Octavia Hill, the housing reformer, Sir Robert Hunter, a solicitor of the Commons Preservation Society and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, a Lake District clergyman.

It was borne out of a vested interest in promoting the “permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historical interest”. Over the past 120 years, the National Trust has grown into the UK’s largest charity, caring for historic properties and areas of beautiful countryside.

Hunter and Hill had thought of their idea ten years previously, whilst they were both still working in London dealing with leading social reformers.

Add to that the enthusiasm of the artist John Ruskin, who was a pioneering conservationist, and from his writings he foresaw the ‘green-house effect’ over a century ago. Ruskin inspired the establishment of The National Trust, and the founders of the National Parks movement.

The first piece of land that was donated to the National Trust was Dinas Oleu by Mrs Fanny Talbot in 1895. This stunning gorse-covered hill, known as Dinas Oleu (Citadel of Light) gives you dramatic views over the Mawddach Estuary and Cardigan Bay – stretching towards the Llyn Peninsula.

The first property that the National Trust purchased in 1896 for £10 was this 650 year old church house, known as Alfriston Clergy House. The house was built back in 1350 during medieval times under the reign of Edward III. It is a rare example of a surviving Wealden timber framed hall house.

In 1931 the National Trust of Scotland is established.

In 1945, on the National Trusts 50th year, it is recorded they have purchased or been donated a massive 112,000 acres of land and 93 historic buildings and have 7,850 members.

Then in 1946 The National Land Fund is established by Dr Hugh Dalton, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. This was set up as a memorial to those killed in the Second World War and this enabled the trust to get many great country houses with the assistance of the Fund.

In 1965 the launch of Enterprise Neptune was established with the aim of acquiring unspoilt coastline which might otherwise be at risk. To celebrate the 50th year of the Neptune campaign in 2015, the National Trust now look after over 775 miles of coastline around the UK.

In 1975, the National Trust reach an amazing 500,000 members, followed in 1981 by 1 million members and 2 million members in 1990. In 2007 there are around 3.5 million members of the National Trust, with the latest number of members counted in 2011 at 4 million. Plus, there are around 50,000 volunteers working for the Trust, donating what Octavia Hill called gifts of time.

In 1995 to celebrate 100 years, a service was held in St Paul’s Cathedral. Over the first 100 years the National Trust have become the guardians of 580,000 acres of countryside in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 545 miles of coastline, 230 historic houses and 130 important gardens.

By becoming a member of the National Trust, you get FREE access to over 500 Trust venues across the UK, including free parking and other member benefits. Membership starts at just £69 per year for an individual.

King Henry VIII of England was King from 1509 until his death and was the second Tudor monarch, succeeding his father, Henry VII.

He is best known for having six wives, in particular his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon and his efforts to have the marriage annulled.

In 1509, Henry VIII became King after his older brother Arthur died.  He married Arthur’s widow, Catherine of Aragon.  She suffered many miscarriages and two sons only lived for a short period of days after their birth.  However, Catherine did have a baby daughter, named Mary born in February 1516.

However in 1536, King Henry VIII wanted to divorce Catherine and so he changed the rules of the catholic church and granted himself a divorce.

King Henry’s 2nd wife was Anne Boleyn and they married on 25th January 1533.  She was already pregnant when they married and on the 26th August 1533 their daughter Princess Elizabeth.  Unfortunately, Anne also suffered a few miscarriages and a son who only lived for a few days after his birth.

It was important that King Henry VIII receive a male heir to the throne, but Anne was unable to give him one.  Many of the Queen’s enemies at the court plotted against her, accusing her of adultery, incest and treason to plot to kill the king.  Although all the charges were false, Anne was found guilty and on 19th May 1536 was beheaded at the Tower of London.

Henry VIII married his new love Jane Seymour on 30th May 1536. On 15th October 1537, Jane gave birth to a baby son, and they named him Edward.  After Edward’s christening, Jane became very ill and died on the 24th October, just two weeks after giving birth.

King Henry had already prepared his own tomb at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle and this is where Jane Seymour was buried – she is the only wife of Henry’s six wives to be buried with him.

He married his 4th wife, Anne of Cleves on 6th January 1540 and this was a marriage of alliance between France and England.  But this marriage was quickly dissolved and incurred no argument from Anne of Cleves.

King Henry VIII 5th wife was Kathryn Howard, and they were married on 28th July 1540.  He was 49 yrs old to her 19 years.  Within a year of their wedding, rumours started about Kathryn Howard’s infidelity, she even employed one as her personal secretary.

In November 1541, Archbishop Cranmer informed the King of Kathryn’s behaviour and with plenty of evidence to prove that she had indeed been promiscuous before and after her marriage to the King, he had Kathryn Howard executed at the Tower of London on the 13th February 1542.

Kathryn Howard is buried near to her cousin Anne Boleyn in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula.

King Henry’s 6th wife was Katherine Parr, and they married on the 12th July 1543.

She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Parr and Maud Green, both of whom worked at the Kings court during his ear reign.

Katherine Parr was married to Edward Borough in 1529 before he died in 1533. Then she went on to marry John Neville in 1534.  He died in March 1543, leaving Katherine a widow once more.

Around this time Thomas Seymour (Jane Seymour’s brother) had expressed a desire to marry Katherine, but the King’s proposal also came at this time, and Katherine felt it was her duty to accept.

Henry VIII died in January 1547.

Katherine was not involved in any role in the upbringing of the new King, Edward VI (her stepson) and moved to Sudeley Castle.  She secretly married Thomas Seymour.

Katherine gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Mary, on 30th August 1548 (her first child).  She became ill after giving birth and died from a puerperal fever on 5th September. She is buried in the chapel at Sudeley Castle in the Cotswolds.