yeah
England once dominated by Roman conquerors his tiny island nation rose
to become one of the largest and most powerful empires in history
it's reach stretched around the globe spanning every continent
it was unimaginably not technology
innovation ambition these were the tools that built this massive Empire and
produce the formidable British name
a powerhouse that dominated
those motions
the Royal Navy is like the microsoft
global system in the eighteenth and nineteenth century they are everywhere
the British Empire constructed massive symbols of dollars
it's still invoke are today
the foundations of that Empire were built on ego bloodshed and relentless
drive for conquest
yeah
410 AD the most powerful Empire the world had ever known is under attack
at the far edges of the British Isles the once mighty Roman legions marched
toward the coast in full retreat
they leave in their wake a military and political void for the first time in
more than 400 years the vulnerable island nation of Britain must fend for
itself
it was the end of one Empire and the beginning of another
the Sun never sets on the British Empire
I've heard those words all my life ever since I was a kid even though I've never
lived in England and that Empire is long gone
hello i'm peter weller at its height the British Empire covered almost a quarter
of the earth's landmass some 14 million square miles and if you think about that
that's just staggering but how did an island if you will in the middle of the
North Atlantic come to be such a behemoth Empire
well in the early 400 AD when those Roman citizens were fleeing in the face
of an onslaught of Vikings and juice and angles and saxons some of those
marauding and wondering people decided to stay
maybe they like the temperate climate and after several centuries they
organized and develop themselves in a somewhat of an Anglo ER English identity
but with the death of the last true Saxon King Edward the Confessor
the door was open for another people to step in the Normans were essentially
descendants of the biking's living in northern France and the Battle of
Hastings in 1066 the Normans did that very thing
it took England under the leadership of a man named William what we call the day
William the Conqueror
with a ravenous lust for power
William would stop at nothing to become king of England to conquer another
country like England who couldn't really be a sort of touchy-feely kind of person
you had to be a very strong leader and that's what he was he was a brutal man
in 1066 William made his move he put together an army of Norman's and stormed
the shores of England
for several bloody hours his forces viciously clashed with King error
here the English coastal town of Hasty's by the end of the day with one strike
William had conquered England
now he would borrow a chapter from the Romans and launched a series of
extraordinary building projects that would transform the English landscape
he imposed himself on England and he builds these castles around the country
now we look at castles and we think that double ignites the Norman castle is not
nice
it was big and towered over your town and it was a reminder to say that you
are under us now and with the biggest monthly bills is the terrible
William wanted the Tower of London to be intimidating
he chose a location on the bank of the River Thames that had once been used by
the Romans the new tower would be built on those foundations capitalizing on the
Roman legacy of power and glory
the complex would include a defensive wall surrounding an imposing too
believe me but the people are used to build it are the locals don't have to do
it so they used effectively slave labor
building on to the remains of the roman walls workers first constructed the
barrier around the complex
on the north and west side where there were no Roman remains they dug ditches
and directed large wooden stakes as a barricade
then they turn to the massive tower itself
for 700 years England had relied on simple timber construction now William
and the Normans would bring back the grandeur of Roman engineering techniques
like the Romans William would build his tower with stone
he didn't trust the quality of the local material so he imported cream-colored
limestone from France his engineers also incorporated romanesque arches and
faults within the structure for support
inside the towers majestic cathedral workers constructed a series of
intersecting barrel vaults called groin vaults
these allow the support to rest on four piers opening a soaring space for
windows too likely imposing interior
it was a great feat for that time because the English will use to building
in wood
so I think it was rather miraculous for them to see this enormous structure god
it was really incredible i mean the the walls are tremendously sick and they
were just little slicks to look out from
the fearsome castle served as a royal residence for stronghold and prison and
intimidation was backed up by swift and severe reprisal against any who dare
challenge the King you get our movement and they go and they land on your
doorstep
they will drive you out of your home they will burn your home down
they will burn your crops so you've got nothing to live on
a lot of killing the course
as the tower near completion in 1087 william died ending 21 years of
turbulent rule
is imposing fortress would be a reminder of his vision and tyranny
for centuries to come
a series of Norman Kings succeeded William and continued his work on the
complex
it would be more than 400 years later that the tower would enter its bloodiest
days
and the king who led it there was not normal but from the English family of
tutors he would become one of the most brutal and gluttonous rulers in
England's history
his name was Henry the eighth
Henry's appetites were legendary
he hungered for food for women for power and for a son who would one day inherit
the crown
the best way to fulfill your duty and your destiny as a king is to produce a
safe line of male heirs and if you look at the portraits of two gentlemen the
standing the legs apart and the hands on the hips with his big cock pieces that
is not by accident that is saying I am fear i'll look at me I companies
families
the Sun is a sign of manhood when his first wife Catherine of Aragon failed to
produce a son Henry set his sights on one of her ladies-in-waiting be alluring
and belen he falls absolute hopelessly in both in love and in lust with
ambulances and is a very very sexy lady and she knows it
there's only one problem and how do you get rid of your wife
apart from murdering chemicals and the answer is going to divorce
when the Pope refused to grant Henry a divorce
the King flew into a rage if he couldn't control his country's religion he would
simply replace it
he boldly severed all ties with Rome and appointed himself head of the new church
of england
Henry now had absolute control over his country he divorced Katherine and made
and his queen
but when she also failed to produce a son she suddenly found herself accused
of adultery
the case is made as damaging as it's possible to be but she's not just having
one affair that she's having a string of affairs that there are sort of orgies
going on in in the palace and Henry is only too ready to believe a lot of this
Henry had an arrested and held in the greatly expanded Tower of London
by now the tower complex had grown to a sprawling 18 acres with an impenetrable
facade
the woody barricade had been replaced and expanded by thick stone walls a
series of towers reinforce their strength and stability
just inside the outer wall a second wall was constructed to provide another layer
of fortification
a ditch had been going around the perimeter and filled with water to form
a moat with these added defenses the tower complex was virtually undefeatable
under Henry's rootless rain the fortress became the location for an orgy of
violence and notorious prison dungeon and execution ground
for his many enemies and it was here that an awaited her fate death by
beheading acts executions were actually really nasty
because it was not uncommon for the acts not to finish the job in one blow
what he does with and the live he says for you darling
nothing but the best
instead of having her head with an axe he's going to have her beheaded nasa
meeting with a sword
on may 1915 36 and was led to a private courtyard on the towers grounds
with one swift stroke Henry's problem was solved
yeah
but Henry's longing for a son was only part of a more ambitious quest
since the beginning of his reign he had lusted after a dream of ultimate glory
to transform England into an empire this idea of a realm would cover every part
of Europe and extend beyond was always in the back of Henry the eighth's mine
is real vision and dream is great appetite was for dominion and Empire
but Henry's road to empire put him on a collision course with France and Spain
Europe's reigning super powers
his plan of attack to fill the high seas with floating weapons of mass
destruction
six Ravens are always kept at the Tower of London
legend has it that if they leave the kingdom will fall
Thunder 1510
an army of laborers scour England's forests gathering material for a
colossal undertaking on England's road to empire
before King Henry VIII 8 could conquer the land he needed to conquer the sea
he set out to radically transform the way battles were fought and won by
turning his ships into deadly weapons
he is the one who first begins putting heavy guns on ships to put these large
siege warfare type guns ship cracking guns
some of the way almost a ton on shipboard that could be used to batter
your enemy into submission
massive guns required massive ships for Henry ordered his naval engineers to
build a new and imposing fleet
the centerpiece his flagship is one of the world's first battleships
it was called them
every row
the Mary Rose really epitomizes the mentality
of naval planners of that age get as many guns pointing is in many directions
on shipboard as you possibly can and that's what the Mary Rose was set to
become a gun platform
the Mary Rose featured a breakthrough advancing warship design gun ports
polls were carved into the side of the ship with flaps that good
over them these holes allowed cannons to be positioned and fired to the side
naval designers could now engineered x dedicated solely to fire power
handed weapons turn the mary rose into a killing machine
this reserve a major revolution really in ship design which the Mary Rose was
some sort of very beginning
mid 16th century England's march toward naval dominance was in full flow
but Henry soon ran into a problem the cost of arming his ships with expensive
bronze guns
was quickly draining England's treasure chest he's got to find other ways to
produce the kinds of you know heavy artillery which can help his armies and
his Navy fight effectively but it is a lower cost and cast iron guns perfect
solution
the cast iron gun runs less than fifth of the cost of a bronze one a successful
cast iron cannon had never been made before
Henry knew how to make it happen he turned to the country's famous
iron-making region the wheeled and gave his engineers a mandate
the difficulty with casting an iron a large piece like a cannon
was the fact that four star iron had to be melted at a much higher temperature
there is only one way to get the temperatures high enough and engineering
wonder of the time the blast furnace
first workers Ford wood and iron ore into the top of a 20-foot tall stone
furnace
a waterwheel power to large bellows that pump air into the fire
stoking it until it reached an incredible 2200 degrees
part enough to melt the iron
workers then open the top at the base of the furnace a stream of hot molten iron
pour down a trough and filled a cannon mold very deep in the ground
it was a very big undertaking and it was very pressured as well you had of course
charcoal burners who produced the charcoal in the woods around the furnace
you had laborers who dug the iron ore from pits in the ground
you had teams off
laborers bringing the wagon loads of four and charcoal to the furnace over
the next few centuries the wheels iron cannons became the envy and dread of
every other European ruler
the transformation is tremendous it gave England power and a technological edge
that no other European power could match
in just 30 years Henry had built his Navy into a powerhouse
but he would never live to see his ultimate dream of European conquest
enormously obese is oversized appetites finally betrayed him
he died in January 1547
leaving a legacy of brutality and innovation that stands through the ages
his reign had laid the seeds that would explode into a mighty empire
and Henry lays the foundations all right by building a navy by building this
notion of Britain as forming an empire and imperial presence in the world act
by the growing power of their Navy
England's Empire would expand over the next 150 years to , nization and
conquest
by the mid 18th century Britain controlled parts of India Africa the
West Indies and North America
A two major threats to the burgeoning Empire loomed ahead and the King would
fight them
George the third
would also be battling demons of his own
it's always talk about as his madness it's a physical illness that he had but
the effect was that it affected his brain
George first slipped into madness in 1788
seven years after suffering a withering blow
a small territory a world away had defeated the mighty British in a war of
independence
it was called America
when the British troops leave and York talent that you know they have this
surrender
they play this to the world turned upside down and that is really how it
seems the world has turned upside down the world's gone mad when rebels win
over the next decade
George's world slowly caved in on him then in 1804 another threat would send
the king and his empire spiraling to the brink french emperor napoleon bonaparte
by the early eighteen hundreds the tyrannical Conqueror was quickly
overtaking Europe
England was his last obstacle to continental dominance
he was as larger threat as the Nazis were in the Second World War II was
amassing the forces for an invasion of the British Isles
England's royal navy had become a major force at sea
and in 1805 it faced Napoleon's invasion threat head-on in the momentous battle
of trafalgar
using fearless naval tactics and the most technically advanced ships of the
age England annihilated the combined forces of the french and spanish fleets
trafalgar confirms Britain's position as the supreme maritime power and the
British emerges the unsurpassed masters of those naval technologies but by the
time of Napoleon's final defeat in 1815 king george the third was permanently
gripped by insanity becoming a mere figurehead of power
mind is completely gone his eyesight goes as well dad he wanders up and down
the corridors of windsor castle has to be fed like a baby and a long beard long
hair and no idea what day it is
this is a sad by this time England was growing rapidly into a super power based
on the supremacy of its naval engineering
but it would be another realm of technical superiority that would
catapult the British Empire to global com
the 19th century was about to usher in a period of engineering invention
not seen since the room
the Mary Rose sank in a battle with the French in 1545
in 1982 the ship was raised from the bottom of the sea
by the 19th century Britain had developed into an industrial Titan
bursting with wealth
it's monumental success came from a period of staggering technological
invention that swept across the Empire and then dominated the globe
it's hard to think of a period in history where you had so much creativity
in terms of Technology so much willing to experiment with the possibilities of
what you can do with machines what you can do with engineering what you can do
with architecture
in the past empires have been built by hand
now the British would dominate their territory with machines engineering
innovations like cast iron and the turning of a warship into a single
ballistic offensive entity with guns transformed English Navy and that Navy
transformed England into an empire and that military and commercial empire that
spread from Europe to Asia from the Americas that Africa dominated the Seas
but what about the land because by the early eighteen hundreds
Britain was jumping with productivity but lacking in means of over land
distribution
well in 1782 amending James Watt perfected an engine driven by steam but
it was 40 years later the george stephenson and his son Robert took that
engine with a firebox boiler piston and a remarkable invention called the
chimney powered a locomotive
called the Rocket over tracks at the blistering speed of 29 miles an hour and
revolutionized over land commercial transportation with the railroad
the rocket was not the first locomotive
but its unique engineering features prove that steam trains with a force of
the future
the key to its speed was in its engine a series of copper pipes carried hot gases
from a cold fueled firebox through a chamber of water
bring it to a boil
this created steam that rose up into a dome and was forced through a valve into
a cylinder the intense pressure from this team pushed a piston rod that
connected to the wheels of the locomotive powering it forward
by venting the exhaust steam out of a chimney instead of the cylinder fresh
air was sucked into the firebox stoking the fire with this advanced the rocket
could charge ahead at blazing speeds
of all the local moments ever imagined at the time
it's the one that looks the most like a locomotive will I mean it's going to be
improved in innumerable ways but that basic machine is the one that that
emerges as a locomotive for the next century
race was on to build railroads across Britain and in 1833 a brilliant and
brash engineer rose to prominence when he entered the railroad game
his name was isambard kingdom brunel brunel was a real showman redressed well
he had beautiful wife
it was a celebrity and he knew how to play that to a hill
he was also a workaholic he's a very difficult time
delegate who now had a bold vision for his railway
it would be the most ambitious project to date a massive network of railroads
connecting all of England together
he called it the Great Western Railway and he was determined to make it the
fastest line ever created
he wanted a track which was on a very very shallow gradient so that the trains
would be able to travel that much faster
the need for speed meant going through mountains rather than over them and this
led to his greatest engineering marvel
today it is known as the Box tunnel
it was necessary essentially - Chism through rock
and the length of the tunnel was something like one and three quarter
miles which was really astonishing for this time
that's a really serious tunnel even by today's standards
brunel amassed hundreds of Irish workers called navvies to dig the tunnel
they began by sinking a series of shafts from the top of the hill
gunpowder was used to blast through the rock
then the navvies were lowered in baskets down the shaft where they excavated the
materials with basic hand tools
horses turned winches and pull the material to the top of the hill
it was a slow painful and sometimes dangerous process of course and there
were fatalities on the Box tunnel during its construction
lots of dust lots of grain and when the explosions were going off the risk of
flying Rock
after four years of work that claimed more than 100 lives
the Box tunnel was finished
the Great Western Railway finally opened in 1841 trains still run through the Box
tunnel
to this day the railway mania that brunel helped ignite eventually spread
to the rest of the Empire tightening England stranglehold
on power around the world
we're always in the middle of the 19th century first in England
wherever they spread their sources of just incredible wonder they be there
loud and dirty
and they're just power and they represent speed they represent the
conquest of space and time
literally awesome machines with the runaway success of the railway written
was now decades ahead of the rest of the world in modern engineering technology
empire was fast approaching its apex
but a staggering blow to its nerve center would rattle the Empire to its
very foundations
the first person to be killed by a train was a member of parliament
he was struck by the rocket in 1830
october 1834
in the dark of the London night of violent fire rages through the very
heart of the British Empire westminster palace
for centuries
this complex of buildings had been the command center of British power
and a towering symbol of its strength now his flames turn the palace into a
roaring inferno thousands watching shock and horror wondering what will become
their mighty government
fire of 1834 had dealt the devastating blow to the political nerve center of
the British Empire westminster palace stood in some form or another since the
late 11th century during the time of William the Conqueror and now these
ruins had the British people wondering what Parliament ever meet again in this
place for Parliament ever rise and vote again in these magnificent buildings
that had given birth to the modern political process
well a loyal Commission was appointed to decide this very thing in a Royal
Commission decided yes
Parliament would be reconstructed in this place but now more difficult
question came up but with these buildings look like would they be
neo-gothic French Italian English would they be the perpendicular style of
elizabethan - door or English Renaissance a sort of a civic war happen
for two years until 1836 the Royal Commission over 97 proposals chose the
plan of a man named Charles Barry who is a fan of the Italian Renaissance but you
combine those elements with neo-gothic and he gave us this the houses of
parliament we have today a sort of a mishmash of styles but a stunning
mishmash
nonetheless
from the ruins of the old parliament british architects will design a
government building of staggering proportions
twice the size of the US Capitol
constructed of sand colored line stone called anston the palace would take up
eight acres of land
with towers soaring as much as 320 feet into the sky
it was decided that one of these massive structures would be a grand clock tower
today we know it as Big Ben
are you able to measure time much more accurately in the 19th century and time
is important time comes to make money and there's there's something of a of a
revolution in the 19th century about time keeping and so if you're going to
have this this latest building
yeah clock tower
when the Royal astronomer george airy announced his requirements for the clock
people were stunned
it would be the largest and most ambitious timepiece the world had ever
seen
now aries demands for excellence were fairly rigorous for instance one of his
requirements was that the clock be accurate to within one second every 24
hour period and furthermore that the accuracy reports of this clock be
telegraphed on down the river thames to the Greenwich Observatory twice a day
now this was not the 21st century age of information and digital clock maker
today
this would not be shooting for the moon the 19th century clock maker to make
such a great clock in a huge tower with such heavy striking mechanisms pushing
such heavy hands with such precision and such accuracy that would be exposed to
the rain wind and elements second after second hour after hour week after week
year after year this was absolutely unimaginable it was like going to the
moon
so Parliament rightfully ask area if you might come up with a plan that was a
little bit more reasonable a little less expensive but area was adamant and thus
the clock today we call Big Ben which is really the name of the bell became the
standard for timekeeping the world over
incredibly it was an amateur clockmaker by the name of Edmund Beckett denison
who designed the famous clock when all other experts failed to meet the
challenge of pinpoint accuracy
like all talks of this type Denison's would be powered by weights years and a
pendulum
but Big Ben's design featured a groundbreaking new device that would
protect the pendulum from outside forces
- metal arms control a wheel with three spokes
each swing of the pendulum one of the arms opens allowing the wheel to turn
one notch this regulates the movement of the cloth when rain or snow ways down
the clocks hands the arms isolate the pendulum
so it keeps swinging without being affected
to fine-tune the clocks accuracy timekeeper simply reach into their own
pockets
and he's used as part of it so
regulating its accuracy by adding or taking away one of these old pennies
from the pendulum the clock actually gain or or lose two fifths to the second
time in 24 hours
with this brilliant but simple method the clock became world famous as a
marvel of precision engineering
the clock tower over the parliament at the center of the Empire has a peculiar
powerful symbolic importance is as if time itself is governed birth British
in addition to the clock a series of bells was needed to told the passing
time
with an enormous central bell ringing on the hour
well founded by the name of George Mears cast a giant Bell to Tennessee's precise
specifications
and Big Ben was born weighing a staggering 13 times
huge crowds lined the streets of London and shared as Big Ben was transported to
the finish clock tower in 1858 it has been filling London with its distinctive
rings
ever since London
was a city tremendously that was really the first large-scale conservation in
the world and as a city that had to have it
icons and the ultimate icon being the mother of Parliament's the parliamentary
building with big ben as a symbol of the strains from the power of the British
Empire
by the mid 19th century
great britain had set the gold standard for technological achievement but under
the reign of a young naive queen
our prices would strike London and push it to the brink of disaster
yeah
a flock of birds landed on the minute hand of Big Ben in 1949 and set the time
back five minutes
in 1837 a teenage girl takes the reins of the most powerful Empire on earth
arise to power ignite turmoil throughout great britain
both her subjects and her government's view her as spoiled impetuous and
unprepared to
aim was Queen Victoria she was any teams you came to the throne and you had a
very very difficult and the first couple of years on the throne in fact was very
unpopular there was little to indicate this immature girl would grow up to
become a revered symbol of the Empire's immense power
her transformation started when she married her cousin Albert in 1840
she fell in love with the first sight all her life actually she wants someone
to lean on and metaphorically and literally and Albert's is able to take
her in hand so she comes in and he helps you grow up
by this time the Empire stretched around the world from North America to
Australia
Albert and Victoria pushed for greatness in engineering and technology
knowing how crucial these advances word to their expanding Empire
none more so than the emerging technology of the telegraph
you've got an empire which is extending literally around the globe
people talk about the annihilation of space and time through electrical
Telegraph the Telegraph industry exploded around the world with Britain
leading the charge during the mid 19th century over 97,000 miles of twisted
steel Telegraph cables were laid a message could now be sent from Britain
to india in a matter of hours the world's first information superhighway
had arrived and with it the Empire could consolidate its power more effectively
than ever before was an enormous state
no question and I it's something which simply was not conceivable before that
they they did it
engineering advances not only United the Empire they triggered a manufacturing
boom
unlike any seen before people flocked from rural areas to city centres to take
advantage of job opportunities
and his productivity skyrocketed so did the population of its nerve centre
london
so where is it had been a million at the beginning of the 1970s it was then by
the eighteen fifties it was already too many and under was not designed for this
and there was terrible
overcrowding three people were living like it though their energy came to
London was bursting with people
cramped and overcrowded sanitation problems spread like wildfire waste
flowed into sewers meant only for rain water filling it with raw sewage that
empty directly into the Thames River the situation was ripe for disaster
and you think the Thames huge River that would be a great way of disposing of
London's waste but unfortunately it was also London's water supply the waste of
two million Londoners was being shunted into the Thames and then Londoners were
actually drinking this
18:48 catastrophe strikes London a cholera epidemic sweeps through the
congested city killing more than 14,000 three years later another outbreak
occurs claiming an additional ten thousand victims
cemeteries fill up with bodies the most advanced city in the world faced
conditions that had not been seen since the black death of the Middle Ages in
that the space of 30 years over 30,000 London has died and this was because
color and because color was spreading through London's polluted water supply
it was shopping something needed to be done
England turned to an engineer by the name of Joseph basile jet dissolution
would revolutionize urban planning
he and thousands of city workers would build the most advanced sewer system to
date
basile jets innovative plan was to install giant intercepting sewers on
each side of the Thames running parallel to the water
these main pipes would be connected to more than 1,300 miles of older city
sewers collecting the waste and averting it away from the river
the genius of the system was that gravity was used wherever possible to
actually move the switch out of London
so the sewers actually ran as an incline when gravity wasn't enough to carry the
flow
dazzle Jack built grand pumping stations
they're large steam-driven engines lifted the sewage until gravity could
take over once again
the sewers guided the waste into too deep reservoirs
where would be stored and released at high tide when nature could dispose of
it neatly
your system really most one of the marvels of of the 19th century
you use 300 million breaks that was extraordinary us moving it was a a truly
colossal task and and and I'm brilliant amazing
this extraordinary engineering feat transformed London into the first modern
glittering metropolis
cities throughout Europe studied it's designed with all
but the disease epidemic wouldn't be the last crisis of Victoria's rave
if you read hard times or Oliver Twist are David Copperfield or any of the
other genius works by Charles Dickens you'll get a sense of the staggering
overpopulation in london in the 19th century and some of the fallout of this
horror was the sheer volume of traffic in London a chaos of pedestrians and
horses and carriages and carts hauling everything from hate to hardware the
traffic from the South alone was bottlenecking the London Bridge such
that London felt like it was choking to death on its own success
london needed another river crossing but a traditional bridge would block the big
merchant boats coming upriver to the port know what London needed was a
drawbridge like that one
the drawbridge would be the largest and most sophisticated of its kind
it would be called the tower bridge the structure is solid steel covered in
stone
to make it look like the nearby Tower of London
when the bridge was built the 1200 tongue leaves or bass cules were lifted
by steam-driven engines
our turned tooth pinions along a curved steel rack riveted to the outside
girders a solid pivot rotated as the opinion raise the structure the bascule
was lifted to an 83 degree angle allowing ships to pass through
the rising of the bridge only took one minute to raise it
so that the incredible feats of engineering it took more than 400 men
and eight years to build tower bridge
today it is one of the most famous and recognizable bridges in the world
despite being the driving force behind these staggering works of engineering
Albert didn't live to see them he died in 1861 shattering Victoria Queen
Victoria fell into grief
like you have never seen
for close to 10 years victorious at in isolation from her country
when she finally re-emerged into public life she was stronger
more powerful than ever before the immature teenager and redefine herself
into a room
modern age and took her rightful place as leader of the British Empire all over
the world
statues to Victoria are erected there are massive celebrations all over the
world and in many cases those celebrations are joined by the colonized
peoples she becomes a figure of affection
Victoria had become the symbol of the Empire's splendor and might and her
reign would mark the apex of British power around the world
the British Empire now had possessions on every major continent and could claim
more than 400 million people under its rule no other country could rival its
immense power
it was the largest empire the world would ever see
Queen Victoria died in 1901 at the dawn of the 20th century
she presided over a realm as large as optimistic confident and as innovative
as any in history
the British Empire had dragged mankind smashing into the modern age with mass
production rapid transit and communication the world would never be
the same
every single country and culture on this planet the day has benefited in some way
or another from British vision and imagination
the Sun may have finally set on the British Empire but regarding the
miracles in the modern age
the Sun never burn brighter for the history channel
i'm peter weller