100 Interesting Facts
We have now achieved our target of posting 100 Interesting Facts! We began posting these back in 2017, with the Facts being submitted by our volunteers and friends. Click on a 'Fact' for more Background information.
You can access a full list of all the Facts here, so you can browse looking for anything that takes your fancy. Click on the title to take you to the 'Background' page. Next to the title is a brief explanation as to what the story is about. The date is the date the Fact was first posted to the site. Please note that when we first started on this series, these Background entries were short and sweet- but over time we have tended to put more and more information into our new postings - along with references so you can follow up on more about the story at your leisure.
If YOU have a Fact you'd like to share, please Contact Us , giving us references so we can check - as before posting anything, our team of historians have to be sure it REALLY IS a fact, not a myth!
Reveal Facts by:
In November 1771, Solway Moss burst, and flowed over the surrounding area, destroying houses and livestock. The land has never recovered.
James Robert Phillips, son of the vicar of Ivegill, had a key role in the events that led to the Benin Expedition of 1897
Joe Biden was sworn in as President of the US on a family Bible translated and annotated by a Penrith Parish Priest, George Leo Haydock.
Carlisle Castle would look very different today if a plan to build a massive defensive bastion facing the town had gone ahead in 1746.
"The Monocled Mutineer" was shot dead by police at Plumpton near Penrith in 1920
Frances Richards, later of Glassonby Lodge, painted the portrait which may have inspired “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
The first recorded African community in Britain was based at Burgh by Sands some 1800 years ago
Cumbrian eccentric William Henry Mounsey carved an inscription into the walls of Wetheral Cave - in Welsh!
The name Torpenhow seems to be made up of three elements, all more-or-less meaning 'hill' in different languages - Hill-hill-hill!
Grisleymires Lane, Milnthorpe, sounds like the location for a horror film - but probably means something like 'muddy hollow of the pigs'
Franz von Werra was the only German prisoner of WWII to escape and get back to Germany. His first escape was from Grizedale Hall
Thomas West, the great historian of Furness, was a Jesuit priest who found himself with time on his hands for his antiquarian interests
The first person (since the Romans) to walk Hadrian's Wall from end to end was William Hutton, in 1801 - aged 77
When copper was discovered near Keswick in the 1560s, no-one in England could extract the metal - so Bavarian miners were brought in
The body of a Crusader buried in 1368 was found to be well preserved when the coffin was opened in 1981
Derwent Island was known as Pocklington's Island in the 1780s. Its owner used to organise mock sieges, with cannons firing from the isle
A drinking glass known as the Luck of Edenhall is one of is one of the most exceptional objects in the V&A's glass collection.
In 1569, Cumbrians tried to overthrow Queen Elizabeth in what became known as Dacre's Raid
Atterpile Castle, now known as Castle Head, near Grange, may have been an Iron Age promontory fort
On 24 November 1542, an English army defeated the Scots on Solway Moss. But the exact location of the battle has been disputed.
