Great Britain

Great Britain was a peninsula until sea levels started to rise and, around 6,100 BC, Britain broke free of Europe for good — geographically speaking.

In AD 84, Rome declared the island of Great Britain conquered after general Agricola defeated the Caledonian tribes of what is now Scotland.

Æthelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, became the King of England, met with Constantine II, King of Scotland, at Eamont Bridge in Cumbria on July 12, 927. The Treaty of Eamont solidified Æthelstan's authority over the Kingdom of Northumbria and established peace between Æthelstan and Constantine II of Scotland. This was a significant step in the process of unifying Great Britain, as it marked the first time that an English king had been able to exert his authority over Scotland.

The Scottish King James VI became King James I of England in 1603 because he was a Protestant and because the two nations hoped that, by uniting two great Protestant kingdoms as one, they might be able to promote the cause of Christ far better in the world. This union of crowns became a union of parliaments on May 1, 1707, and the historian Linda Colley argues that "Protestantism was the foundation that made this invention of Great Britain possible."

The world was introduced to ‘John Bull’, the personification of Great Britain, in a series of five satirical pamphlets by Dr John Arbuthnot in 1712. They showed Bull as a clothier tangled in a lawsuit against ‘Lewis Baboon’ ((i.e. Louis Bourbon, or Louis XIV of France).

John Bull in his World War I iteration.

The terms "United Kingdom" and "Great Britain" are not interchangeable—the United Kingdom includes Northern Ireland, while Great Britain does not.

The slang term "Blighty" for Britain comes from when British soldiers in India  corrupted the Hindi word "bilayati", meaning "foreign", "British", "English" or "whitey."

Great Britain is the world's ninth-largest island.