The United States started life as colonies strung along the Atlantic seaboard of the North American continent and barely extending 50 miles inland. By the time of the Declaration of Independence, these original 13 colonies occupied an area roughly one-tenth of today’s country. Over the next 200 years, the United States great to fill the massive continent to the Pacific coast. Who were the Presidents who oversaw the country’s greatest expansions?

In over two hundred years of nationhood, the United States of America has more than fulfilled its ‘manifest destiny’ to stretch from ‘sea to shining sea’. From the original 13 colonies clustered on the northeastern seaboard, the country has stretched southwards and, most importantly, westwards. ‘Go west, young man go West and grow up with the country’ urged Horace Greeley. And they did, in their millions, pushing beyond the Appalchians and over the Rockies until America finally stretched from coast to coast.

With the addition of two non-contiguous states (Hawaii and Alaska) and a series of island territories, the United States today covers 3,794,101 square miles – just shy of 2.5 billion acres and the third largest country in the world (after Russia and Canada), although this third place is disputed by some who suggest China is the world’s third largest country. Still, to put this in perspective, this is over 40 times larger than the United Kingdom and over twice as big as the 27 member states of the European Union.

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If you were fabulously wealthy and fashionable in the 16^th and 17^th centuries you might demonstrate your power and influence by building a grand house. Hundreds were built across England, serving the landed aspirations of a burgeoning nobility. But a handful had a design concept that was quite unique – these are the ‘calendar houses’, built according to numerological principles to represent the days, weeks or months of a year.

In 1604, Thomas Sackville, the 1^st Earl of Dorset, built Knole House. It had 365 rooms, 52 staircases and 7 courtyards to represent the number of days and weeks in a year and the number of days in a week. It started an minor architectural trend where buildings were designed according to the number of days, weeks, months or seasons in a year. It was an idea that fascinated a noble class interested in horology, astronomy, mathematics and symbolism.

As The Country Seat puts it: “the principle of the calendar house is that the number of external doors, windows or panes of glass, chimneys, or staircases etc should total either 4 (the number seasons), 7 (days in a week), 12 (months in a year), or 365 (days in a year).”

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The United States of America has only officially declared war on five occasions in over two centuries of its existence. Formal declarations were made by Congress in 1812, 1846, 1898, 1917 and 1941. So does this mean the US has spent most of its history at peace? And what about the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraqi and Afghanistan wars?

Under Article One of Section Eight of the Constitution of the United States, Congress is given the power to declare War. Formal declarations of war have been made in the following conflicts:

• The War of 1812 (18 June 1812);
• Mexican-American War (13 May 1846);
• Spanish-American War (25 April 1898);
• World War I (6 April 1917 (Germany) and 7 December 1917 (Austria-Hungary); and
• World War II (8 December 1941 (Japan), 11 December 1941 (Germany and Italy) and 5 June 1945 (Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania).

Given the limited number of times formal declarations of war have been made, how was the US been engaged in so many military conflicts over the centuries? A little bit of semantics and a lot of power politics between the legislature and executive have provided room for military clashes. 

In some cases, Congress has authorised extended military combat and the deployment of the United States’ armed forces. Such authorisations have covered conflicts such as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Gulf War and the support of South Vietnam in the Vietnam War.

Other conflicts have been authorised by a United Nations Security Council Resolutions and funded by Congress. UN-backed military engagements have included interventions in Korea, Libya and Haiti.

Finally, there are a bunch of conflicts that have not involved any Congressional oversight or sanction. Wars against native American tribes, the Philippines and the bombing of Yugoslavia have all been undertaken under presidential sanction but without the approval of Congress.

If you travel to south Wales by train roughly ten miles north of Bristol you will plunge into darkness and enter the Severn Tunnel. Seven kilometres later, you will emerge into the light and over the border into Wales. The tunnel was built by the Great Western Railway between 1873 and 1886 and was, for many years, the UK’s longest mainline railway tunnel.

I had never travelled through the tunnel, so I decided to look it up on Wikipedia and see if there was anything interesting in its construction or history. Doing so, I came across this:

“During World War II, a Great Western Railway passenger train was pursued by a German aircraft along the main line to Wales. Reaching speeds estimated at 90 mph (140 km/h), well above the wartime restrictions in place, the train successfully escaped into the tunnel and stopped beneath the river until the driver judged that the danger had passed. The train was struck by several bullets during the chase but there were no serious injuries.”

This story seemed to be confirmed in a report from the South Wales Argus celebrating the 125^th anniversary of the tunnel. It also got me thinking about the role British Railways played during the Second World War.

The railways played a key role in both the First and Second World Wars, but this article focuses on their role in the latter conflict. Troop transportation and munition production would have ground to a halt without regular and intensive use of the railway network. The railways were also instrumental to the evacuation of children from the danger of bomb-targeted urban areas. According to the National Railway Museum:

“During a weekend in September 1939 over 1,300,000 children in over 3,000 special trains were evacuated from the cities to the countryside.”

The railways were also vital to removing evacuated British troops from Dover after the retreat over the English Channel from Dunkirk. Such a massive effort required centralised control and direction. During the 1920s, the railways had already been consolidated (or ‘grouped’) from an uneconomically viable patchwork of companies into the Big Four: the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), Southern Railway (SR) and the Great Western Railway (GWR). This made further centralisation much easier when war came.

Almost immediately following the outbreak of war, control of the railways was passed to the Railway Executive Committee. For the first time, the term ‘British Railways’ was officially sanctioned and used. The Railway Executive Committee also had control of the extensive advertising hoardings and information posters at stations and used them to hammer home messages on air raid protection, reduced and emergency services and urging people to avoid unnecessary or leisure travel.

The railways were soon dressed for war, with station names blacked out to confuse the enemy in case of invasion, a network-wide blackout and fixing wire mesh to train windows to limit the damage from flying glass following bomb explosions. Timetables were radically altered to prioritise war work and the public were repeatedly asked to consider “is your journey really necessary?” People were urged to ‘keep ‘em moving’ by travelling less, travelling lighter or by staggering their journeys.

By the end of the Second World War, the British Railway network was completely worn out but, unlike continental railways, was sufficiently undamaged to allow it to be patched up rather than radically replaced or overhauled. According to a calculation by the Central Statistical Office during the period 1938–1953 the railways suffered a net disinvestment of £440 million (around £11 billion in 2005 prices)

Where do the world’s most powerful people live? In most countries, the head of state or leading politicians are given grace and favour residences that have become emblematic of their government. From the White House to Number 10 Downing Street, the Kremlin to Zhongnanhai, executive mansions are fascinating insights into the history and self-image of nations. Here are a few of my favourites. 

There are a huge number of perks that come with being President of the United States of America but perhaps the most prestigious is having 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500 as your home address. The White House, as the executive mansion of the United States is more usually known, is one of the world’s most iconic presidential pads.

In the world of executive mansions, the White House’s famous façade is only rivaled by Number 10 Downing Street’s shiny black door. Both Number 10 and the White House are so famous that they’ve become metonyms, their names frequently employed as journalistic shorthand to refer to the executive branches of the UK and the USA respectively.

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Imagine an elite division of Cuban troops infiltrating the USA, making their way to Washington, D.C. and killing the President in a daring and direct raid on the White House. Or perhaps a secret squad of SS officers landing on the moonlit shores of eastern England before making their way undetected to London and then assaulting Number 10 Downing Street and assassinating Winston Churchill. Do these seem too far-fetched? The plotlines of a grubby thriller? Maybe. But in the Blue House Raid, North Korean commandos attempted an equally daring and unlikely attack. 

In recent weeks, North Korea has been in the news as it threatens preemptive nuclear annihilation for its enemies. No other state can quite match People’s Republic of Korea for rogue and unpredictable behavior; the regime in Pyongyang is as close as the world gets to a textbook Bond-style villain.

But even a country that routinely shocks the world with its peculiarly antagonistic behavior can still surprise. And few things could be as surprising as a covert attack on the executive mansion that is both home to your enemy’s leader and symbol of the nation’s government.

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Heraldry in England developed in all its elaborate glory in the middle ages. One of the most striking features was the emergence of supporters as part of a full coat of arms. Animals, both real and imaginary, humans, angels and objects could all be used to stand either side of the main shield. In England, the development of the monarchy can be traced by observing the changing supporters who form a vast menagerie of heraldic design.  

On 18 July, 1484, a dangerous piece of doggerel was pinned to the door of St Paul’s Cathedral. It read quite simply:

“the Catte, the Ratte and Lovell our dogge

rulyth all Englande under a hogge.”

Sir William Catesby, Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Viscount Lovell are easily identifiable in this piece (Lovell was referred to as a dog in insult but also in reference to the silver hound on his coat of arms) – but who was the hog?

It referred to no less a figure than the king himself, King Richard III and this made the note scandalous and treasonable. Richard III was frequently associated with a hog – Shakespeare used it to describe the maligned monarch as:

“Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!”

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The British £2 is one of the most striking coins in circulation. As well as being the only mainstream bimetallic coin in the UK, it is wider and heavier than any other. With its golden edge and silver centre, it has become the coin of choice to commemorate events, people and institutions of national significance.

The current series of the £2 coin was launched on 15 June 1998 with the Royal Mint issuing millions for general circulation. A review of coinage carried out in 1994 had suggested the need for a new, higher denomination coin than the pound. The four-year gap between suggestion and introduction demonstrates the seriousness with which the government and Royal Mint took the task of designing a suitable new coin.

The Royal Mint consulted a wide range of groups, from the RNIB to channel the concerns of people with limited or no sight to the vending machine industry. Age Concern was consulted to ensure that the coin was designed to limit any confusion from the elderly and the general public were invited to express their opinions and concerns.

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Argentine animosity towards the United Kingdom is neither a recent trend nor solely attributable to competing claims for islands in the South Atlantic. The roots of Anglo-Argentine friction go back to the mid-nineteenth century. Argentina was then at the heart of Britain’s informal economic empire, a shadowy counterpart to the more overt imperial power seen in places such as India and throughout Africa.

Opponents labelled it ‘el pulpo inglés’, the English Octopus, with British-financed railways spreading tentacles of influence over the pampas and an oversized, bulbous head representing the debt, finance and banking obligations that tied, some say shackled, Buenos Aires to London.

Few sights present as quintessentially English a scene as admiring the immaculately trimmed polo fields of the Hurlingham Club, window shopping under the famous green canopies of Harrods department store or watching a football match between the St Andrews School and Balmoral College. The Anglophile can attain a pinnacle of perfection by taking afternoon tea, leisurely browsing through the local news in the Herald.

This English dream would soon be shattered by walking along the wide boulevards, listening to the animated, strangely Italianate Rioplatense Spanish of the porteños and struggling in a heat that can reach above 40°C (104°F) and rarely sinks below 10°C (50°F). At almost 7,000 miles from London this is no Engaland; this is Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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The newspaper headlines leave little doubt that fiscal cuts will hit the armed forces especially hard. The Evening Standard led with “Britain’s army will be slashed to smallest size since Napoleonic wars”, raising the prospect of the UK’s land forces being reduced to their lowest numbers for over 200 years. But how has the size of the British Army changed in the past centuries? And how has the Army coped with past budget cuts and reductions in size?

The British Army came into being in 1707  after the formation of the United Kingdom between the Kingdoms of England and Scotland. Older English and Scottish regiments were subsumed into the British force and the red coated warriors would become synonymous with Britain’s imperial adventures over the next two and a half centuries.

The idea of a standing (or permanent) army was still relatively new at this point. Parliament had been suspicious of Stuart plans for a large English standing army and, prior to 1642, Scotland had no effective permanent forces. The British Army required (and still requires) annual Parliamentary approval to remain in existence as a legal force.

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