Learning more about
the United Kingdom and Ireland
The last time Parliament met outside London was in Oxford in 1681.
Track four at King's Cross Station in London was used in the film "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." The real London Zoo where Harry discovers he can talk to snakes also was used in the film.
The term "hook and crook" is believed to have come from an old English law that allowed peasants to keep anything they could draw out from the edge of the king's game preserve with a hook or crook (shepherd's staff).
The potato is not native to Ireland. The first spuds in Europe were brought over from the Americas by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1596 and planted on his estate in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland.
"Erin Go Bragh" was derived from the Irish-Gaelic phrase meaning "Ireland forever."
In 1986, a 900-year-old cheese was found perfectly preserved in a bog in the County of Tipperary and has not yet been eaten.
