31 Interesting Facts About the UK

The United Kingdom is the homeland of the pub quiz. This is the country where two people named Sharon Burns and Tom Porter turned a slow Tuesday night at the pub into a national institution. So when I sat down to write about interesting UK facts, I felt a certain responsibility to get them right.

Every fact in this article is verified against official sources: the Royal Family's website, UK Parliament, the Office for National Statistics, museums, and encyclopedias. You will find the full list of sources at the bottom. No half-remembered trivia here.

I organized the facts into themed sections: history, royals, geography, culture and food, and quirky laws. Each one of them can be turned into a quiz question, and I encourage you to do exactly that. Let's start with the fact that trips up more quizzers than any other.

The UK, Great Britain, and England are not the same thing

This is my favorite opening fact because it is the source of endless pub quiz arguments. People use these three names interchangeably, and they really shouldn't:

England is one country. It shares the island of Great Britain with Scotland and Wales.
Great Britain is the island (and a political term for England, Scotland, and Wales together). It does not include Northern Ireland.
The United Kingdom is the sovereign state: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

So a Scottish person is British but not English, and someone from Belfast is from the UK but not from Great Britain. According to the Office for National Statistics, the whole thing is home to about 68.3 million people (mid-2023 estimate). Now that we have the boundaries sorted, on to the facts.

History facts that sound made up (but aren't)

The UK, Great Britain, and England are not the same thing

This is my favorite opening fact because it is the source of endless pub quiz arguments. People use these three names interchangeably, and they really shouldn't:

England is one country. It shares the island of Great Britain with Scotland and Wales.
Great Britain is the island (and a political term for England, Scotland, and Wales together). It does not include Northern Ireland.
The United Kingdom is the sovereign state: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.