Hacker News with Generative AI: England

Dismaland (wikipedia.org)
Dismaland was a temporary art project organised by street artist Banksy in the seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England.

Art, Street Art, England, Temporary Art, Banksy

5 points by Tomte 6 days ago | 0 comments

The grit and glory of British toe wrestling (huckmag.com)
The Obsessives — Born out of a Derbyshire pub in the ’70s, the foot clenching sport has gradually built a cult following in rural England. Ginnia Cheng reported on toe wrestling’s London debut from a south Tottenham pub.

Sports, Culture, England, UK

3 points by pseudolus 6 days ago | 0 comments

1,700 year old egg never broke (atlasobscura.com)
About 50 miles northwest of London sits a very old wishing well. Romans used to toss objects into the water here, offering items to the gods for good luck. Nearly 2,000 years later, archaeologists are still finding ancient artifacts from what is now a large, muddy pit, including coins, ceramic pots, shoes, and even bones from between 270 and 300 AD.

Archaeology, History, England, Ancient Artifacts, Wishing Wells

100 points by demadog 11 days ago | 35 comments

Decline of cash credited for drop in NHS surgery for children swallowing objects (theguardian.com)
Figures reveal 29% fall in operations in England to remove foreign bodies from children’s airways, noses and throats

Health, Children, England, Money, Healthcare

5 points by zeristor 29 days ago | 1 comments

The Trials of an Exorcist, 1597 (gethistories.com)
It’s October 1597, and something is wrong with William Somers, a young man of around 19 or 20, living in Nottingham, England. We’re told he

History, Religion, Exorcism, England

13 points by pepys 42 days ago | 0 comments

The strange story of Britain’s oldest sweet (2019) (bbc.com)
First created as a medicine, liquorice cakes have been eaten throughout the centuries – and are an unlikely symbol of Yorkshire.

Food, History, England, Culture

9 points by austinallegro 46 days ago | 1 comments

The Wild Hunt in England (historytoday.com)
In the spring of 1127 something very strange was going on in Peterborough. The monks of Peterborough Abbey, a venerable institution which had fallen on hard times, were unhappy: Henry I had imposed on them a new abbot, Henry of Poitou, whom they saw as a grasping and deceitful man.

History, England, Monasteries

3 points by drdee 47 days ago | 0 comments

Reintroductions of beavers into the wild in several parts of England (wildlifetrusts.org)
The Wildlife Trusts congratulate the UK Government’s decision to open the door for licenced reintroductions of beavers into the wild and its acknowledgment of the free-living populations in several parts of England.

Wildlife Conservation, Beavers, UK Government, England

193 points by thinkingemote 54 days ago | 149 comments

Life expectancy growth stalls across Europe as England sees sharpest decline (theguardian.com)
Life expectancy improvement is stalling across Europe with England experiencing the biggest slowdown. Experts are blaming this on an alarming mix of poor diet, mass inactivity and soaring obesity.

Health, Europe, England, Demographics, Social Trends

35 points by pseudolus 66 days ago | 48 comments

Age of Invention: How Coal Won (ageofinvention.xyz)
Over the course of 1570-1600, people all along the eastern coast of England, and especially in the rapidly-expanding city of London, stopped using wood to heat their homes. They instead began to burn an especially crumbly, sulphurous coal from near Newcastle in Northumberland — a fuel whose thick, heavy smoke reeked, stinging their eyes, making them wheeze and cough, and tarnishing their clothes, furnishings, and skin.

History, Energy, England, Pollution, London

10 points by Khaine 73 days ago | 1 comments

89% of 2024 sexual offences in England went unsolve (theguardian.com)
Victims are being “let down time and time again” by police, a minister has said, as almost every violent or sexual offence went unsolved in hundreds of crime hotspots last year.

Crime, England, Law Enforcement, Sexual Assault

51 points by lr0 102 days ago | 34 comments

How the lore of New Year defeated the law of New Year (davidallengreen.com)
By the mid 1700s in England there was a curious juxtaposition between the lore of New Year’s Day and the law of New Year’s Day.

History, Culture, England, Law

114 points by quickfox 114 days ago | 61 comments

NHS to begin world-first trial of AI tool to identify type 2 diabetes risk (theguardian.com)
The NHS in England is launching a world-first trial of a “gamechanging” artificial intelligence tool that can identify patients at risk of type 2 diabetes more than a decade before they develop the condition.

Healthcare, Artificial Intelligence, England

3 points by voisin 118 days ago | 0 comments

The rock houses of England's last cave people (bbc.co.uk)
It was the middle of the 20th Century when England's last cave dwellers gave up their homes in a rural part of the country near Birmingham.

History, Archaeology, England, Culture, Housing

12 points by gnufx 121 days ago | 2 comments

Appeal for British oak to recreate Sutton Hoo ship (theguardian.com)
The aim is ambitious: to complete a functioning reconstruction of the extraordinary Sutton Hoo burial ship by 2026 and test it on the river and sea, hopefully providing fresh insight into what life was like in Anglo-Saxon times.

History, Archaeology, England, Reconstruction, Ships

37 points by zeristor 131 days ago | 41 comments

Bowel cancer rising among under-50s worldwide, research finds (theguardian.com)
The number of under-50s being diagnosed with bowel cancer is increasing worldwide, according to research that also reveals rates are rising faster in England than almost any other country.

Health, Cancer, Research, England

17 points by GeoAtreides 135 days ago | 4 comments

A woman appeared on the English stage on this day in 1660 (smithsonianmag.com)
The audience at the King’s Company production of Othello on December 8, 1660, heard an unusual prologue before the play began. “The Woman playes to day, mistake me not,” one of the actors read aloud. “No Man in Gown, or Page in Petty-Coat; / A Woman to my knowledge ….”

Theater, History, England

63 points by pepys 138 days ago | 13 comments

An English castle became a stork magnet (bbc.com)
Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

Wildlife, Conservation, Migration, England

67 points by ohjeez 152 days ago | 14 comments

King Arthur's ancient trail across Britain (cnn.com)

History, Archaeology, England, United Kingdom, Mythology

45 points by peutetre 160 days ago | 41 comments

Red squirrels 'to vanish from England' unless vaccine against squirrelpox funded (theguardian.com)
Red squirrels will soon disappear from England unless the government funds a vaccine against squirrelpox, one of the biggest groups set up to protect the species has warned.

Wildlife Conservation, England, Vaccines, Endangered Species

7 points by pseudolus 160 days ago | 0 comments

Fear, Friendship and the Channel Tunnel (historytoday.com)
At 8.23am on the morning of 14 November 1994, crowds cheered as the first Eurostar train carrying fare-paying passengers under the English Channel left London’s Waterloo Station.

History, Transportation, England, France

21 points by Thevet 161 days ago | 21 comments

Cornish monument is 4k years older than was thought and 'without parallel' (theguardian.com)
An enigmatic stone and turf structure on Bodmin Moor that was previously thought to be a medieval animal pen has been found to be 4,000 years older – and unique in Europe.

Archaeology, History, England, Monuments, Ancient History

54 points by zeristor 168 days ago | 14 comments

We Shall Fight in the Buttery – Oxford's War 1939–1945 (literaryreview.co.uk)
It’s said that Oxford was spared destruction on the scale of Coventry because Adolf Hitler wanted the place as his capital after he conquered England. Ashley Jackson’s engrossing new book describes how the city of dreaming spires woke up to the realities of the Second World War. His trawl through the archives has yielded a rich and glittering haul, containing much that will interest more people than mere Oxonians.

History, Oxford, England, Books

55 points by andrewl 172 days ago | 11 comments

Big Data for the Leviathan (lrb.co.uk)
It is an instructive irony of English political history that the Houses of Parliament were burned down not by revolutionaries but by bureaucrats.

Politics, History, England

52 points by pepys 177 days ago | 7 comments

Disposable vapes to be banned in England and Wales (bbc.com)
The sale of single-use disposable vapes will be banned in England and Wales from June next year, the government has confirmed.

England, Wales, Vaping, Public Health, Legislation

149 points by nithinj 183 days ago | 156 comments

Nature of crimes – Vagrancy, heresy and treason in the 16th century (bbc.co.uk)
Some crimes have always existed, whilst others are particular to certain periods in history. How has the nature of criminal activity differed and changed over time?

History, Crime, Law, England, 16th Century

6 points by thunderbong 184 days ago | 9 comments

An Approach to Flooding in England: Give Land Back to the Sea (nytimes.com)
When a huge tract of land on the Somerset coast was deliberately flooded, the project was slammed as “ridiculous” by a local lawmaker. But the results have been transformative.

Climate Change, Environmentalism, England, Coastal Management

5 points by lhomdee 186 days ago | 1 comments

A Language of Beautiful Impurity (edwest.co.uk)
The Gouth of Hastings was fought at Sandlake Hill in mid-October, 1066. There, the English, under King Harold, won a breme and athel seyer over the Normans, led by Earl William ‘the Unrightluster’, a man who was willing to spill a swith great muchness of blood to fulfil his yearning for the English highsettle, wealth and his own wulder.

Language, History, Linguistics, England

79 points by nafnlj 200 days ago | 24 comments

Pine martens return to Dartmoor after 150-year absence (theguardian.com)
Fifteen pine martens are darting through the woods of Dartmoor for the first time in 150 years after the rare but recovering species was reintroduced into south-west England.

Wildlife, Conservation, England, Reintroduction

82 points by zeristor 206 days ago | 31 comments

America's oldest tombstone came from Belgium and belonged to an English knight (phys.org)
Jamestown, Virginia, was founded in 1607 and was the first English permanent settlement in America. It has been the subject of many archaeological and historical analyses, including a recent study by Prof. Markus M. Key and Rebecca K. Rossi, which set out to determine the provenance of Jamestown's black "marble" knight's tombstone. What they determined was unexpected, says Prof. Key.

History, Archaeology, Virginia, England, Tombstones

50 points by wglb 219 days ago | 26 comments