Why is this a British achievement? We were very late to the game in offering equal voting for men and women
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[Misc] What was Britain’s single greatest achievement of the 20th century?
- Thread starter Nottseagull
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Why is this a British achievement? We were very late to the game in offering equal voting for men and women
I agree. Hardly an achievement, more correcting a mistake.
HastingsSeagull
Well-known member
The World Wide Web.
Must have brought countless people out of poverty around the world and enabled so many other things
Must have brought countless people out of poverty around the world and enabled so many other things
Knocky's Nose
Mon nez est retiré.
Penicillin, 1928, Alexander Fleming, for saving so many lives.
A close second is coming out on top in WW2 - saving yet more lives, although a truly upsetting amount were wasted. Don't even talk about WW1......
Third, it has to be getting BHAFC into the Premiership. Sir Lord Admiral Hooton and His Eminence Archbishop Anthony of Bloome will go down in history for that.
A close second is coming out on top in WW2 - saving yet more lives, although a truly upsetting amount were wasted. Don't even talk about WW1......
Third, it has to be getting BHAFC into the Premiership. Sir Lord Admiral Hooton and His Eminence Archbishop Anthony of Bloome will go down in history for that.
Third, it has to be getting BHAFC into the Premiership. Sir Lord Admiral Hooton and His Eminence Archbishop Anthony of Bloome will go down in history for that.
Tbf this was a 21st century achievement.
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Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Penicillin- Fleming
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BadFish
Huge Member
- Oct 19, 2003
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I love the smell of germolene in the morning.
- Jan 3, 2012
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There's this big country on the other side of the Atlantic called the United States of America which made a fairly significant contribution.
Weststander
Well-known member
After a very significant period when they didn’t. FDR wanted to, but Congress insisted that the States stay out of another European wwr.
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Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
- Jan 3, 2012
- 17,357
Read the post you've quoted.
I have done. I was reacting to "WE won it by ourselves..... or rather areselves".
And I know he's a pi11ock.......
The problem with that achievement is the part we played in the Treaty of Versailles which set the exact conditions for the National Socialists to be elected to power. Similar to the mess we left in Iraq that created IS.
Hitler and Nazis were largely a mess of our own making.
And yet another example of the UK having a lead on the rest of the world and failing to exploit it. (see post #40).
Despite being discovered, refined and developed in the UK (and Fleming just played a small part in this, Howard Florey was responsible for ensuring it had a practical use), it was patented in the US so British health services had to pay royalties for a British drug.
Perhaps the country's biggest achievement is spectacularly cocking up on so many technological and scientific fronts - although, to be fair, it was often for altruistic reasons. Florey didn't patent penicillin as he thought it was unethical to profit from medical discoveries and Berners-Lee didn't seek to profit from the web as he thought it belonged to the world
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Oh true, history is so often a case of Cause and Effect. If you want to start a thread entitled "Britain's biggest mistakes of the 20th Century" the the Treaty of Versailles would be right up there - and the Balfour Declaration probably wouldn't be far behind! (And probably the partitioning of Ireland)
Doesn't lessen the achievement of 1940 though.