Thursday 15 March 2018

Sun Still Doesn't Set On The British Empire

I once had a geography teacher who would produce a large map with large swathes of the Worlds nations coloured pink and he would say: 'This bit was ours, and this bit, and this bit, and this bit, the French got this bit, not sure how that happened but we got this bit, and this bit.
Of course what he was talking about was the British Empire which spanned the globe and led to the saying that the Sun never set on it, since it was always daytime somewhere in the Empire.
To some the Empire was the good old days, to the rest of us it was the dark days when we would turn up in nations already occupied by other people, shoot many of them and then stick a flag in the ground and claim it for Britain before stealing their natural resources and shooting a few more when they got uppity.
Since the turn of the 20th Century the Empire has been dwindling and now Britain has only fourteen overseas territories but as the Sun never sets on all fourteen British territories at once, the saying is still accurate, the Sun still doesn't set on the British Empire.
My old geography teacher would be very proud.

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