How much of your day was invented in Britain? More than you'd ever guess. 🇬🇧 Follow one ordinary family through one ordinary Friday. Six things ordinary Brits gave the world. They won't notice a single one. And the last one, just before bed, is the biggest of all. 🎥 The little lights down the middle of the road. 🚗 Invented by a mill lad who left school at thirteen. So the story goes, a cat on a fence saved his life. The stamp on the post. ✉️ Before 1840, the person receiving a letter paid for it. One letter could cost more than a day's wages. A servant girl handed hers back. It was blank. The marks on the outside were a code from her sweetheart. School for every child. 🏫 A cobbler in Portsmouth taught poor children for nothing. He won them over with hot baked potatoes. Saturday football. ⚽ Arsenal began with fifteen workers who chipped in sixpence each for a ball. 999. ☎️ Born out of one terrible night in London in 1935. A call for help that never got through. And the front door. 🚪 In 1762, four of the King's men forced their way into a schoolmaster's home. John Entick took them to court. The judge's answer: unless the law allows it, nobody comes in. Not even the King's men. Not one of them was a king. 👑 They teach you history is kings and parliaments. Not that your ordinary day was built by ordinary people. Watch the full story. 🎥 People like you built all of this once. We can build together again. Count yourself in: proudofus.co.uk Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

Britain built the world's first programmable electronic computer. 🇬🇧 Not in a university. In a Post Office. Watch the full story. 🎥 Tommy Flowers was a bricklayer's son from the East End. There was no money for university. So he went to evening classes, year after year. 📚 In the war, Hitler sent his most secret orders by teleprinter. Scrambled by a machine even more complex than Enigma. Breaking one message by hand took weeks. ⏳ Tommy had a better idea. A machine built from fifteen hundred glass valves. The experts said they'd never last. One senior codebreaker wanted him taken off the work for "squandering good valves". 🙄 Bletchley wouldn't back him. So he put in some of his own money. 💷 Eleven months later, Colossus read the enemy's messages at five thousand letters a second. Weeks became hours. ⚡ On 1 June 1944, five days before D-Day, a bigger Colossus went to work. It showed Hitler had swallowed the bait. He still expected the landings at Calais. 🎯 After the war, the machines were broken up. Every drawing was burnt. 🔥 The government gave Tommy a thousand pounds. It didn't cover what he'd spent himself. He still shared it with his team. The Bank of England turned down his loan for another one. They didn't believe it could work... He couldn't tell them he'd already built ten. 🤐 Everyone's heard of Silicon Valley. Hardly anyone has heard of Dollis Hill. 📍 Today a rebuilt Colossus runs again at Bletchley Park. You can stand beside it and hear it. 🏛️ Now we're told this country can't build anything any more. Tommy proved them wrong once. Help us switch Britain back on: proudofus.co.uk/support 💡 Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

A crowd of Glasgow housewives once froze rents across Britain. 🇬🇧 
With a bell. A rattle. And a bag of flour. Watch the full story. 🎥 Glasgow, 1915. Workers poured into the city for war work. 
There weren't enough homes to go round. So the landlords hiked the rents. 📈 Lots of those families had a man serving overseas. 
Fall behind on rent? The factor sent the bailiffs. 🚪 Not one of those women could vote for an MP. 
Mary Barbour, an engineer's wife from Govan, brought them together anyway. 🔔 
Pay the old rent. Refuse the rise. Not a penny more. When a bailiff came up the stairs, a woman rang a bell. 
Doors flew open all the way up the building. 
Flour if they'd been baking. Wet washing if they'd been washing. 🧺 
Usually, he ran for his life. 🏃 By November 1915, up to twenty thousand Glasgow tenants were on strike. 
Then a factor took eighteen of them to court. ⚖️ On the morning of the hearing, the shipyards walked out. 
Thousands of men marched with the women. 🚢 
Britain was fighting a war. It needed those munitions. The cases were dropped. 
Within weeks, Parliament froze rents across the country. Parts of that law stayed on the books until 1989. 📜 You were probably taught how women won the vote. 
You probably weren't taught what came first. 🗳️ Mary's bell only worked because every door opened. The bell's ringing. Come out and join us: proudofus.co.uk 🔔 Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

They teach you the world got connected in the 1990s. 
Not that a British ship did it in 1866. 🇬🇧 Watch the full story. 🎥 When Abraham Lincoln was shot, London didn’t find out for twelve days. ⏳ An American called Cyrus Field dreamed of a wire under the ocean. 
But nobody in America could make it. Only Britain could. 🇬🇧🏭 Two warships tried to lay it. HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara. 🚢 
It snapped. It broke. Again and again. 💔 In August 1858 it finally held. America went wild. 🎆 
Three weeks later the cable was dead. For seven years the ocean stayed silent.
Then Britain took it on. 🇬🇧 A new cable from Greenwich. 
The only ship on earth big enough to carry it: Brunel’s giant, the Great Eastern. ⚓ In 1865, twelve hundred miles out, the cable snapped. 
It sank more than two miles down. 🌊 Most people would have given up… 
They made another cable instead. 💪 July 1866. Heart’s Content, Newfoundland. 
Britain and America were joined. News that took twelve days now took minutes. ⚡ But the job wasn’t finished. 
They went back for the cable they’d lost. Two and a half miles down. Nearly thirty attempts. 🪝 Then the spot of light moved. 
The cable was alive. ✨ The wharf is still there in Greenwich. The house on it is a pub now. 
You can drink a pint where the world was wired. 🍺 We come from people who go back for it. 🇬🇧 Help us bring Britain back up from the dark: proudofus.co.uk Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧