• the San Salvador was a galleon of the Spanish Armada whose capture supplied the English with a significant proportion of the gunpowder that they used in the campaign?
• in 1560, the English helped the Scots lay siege to the French encampment at Leith?
• US abolitionist Robert Purvis had two grandparents who were English, a grandmother kidnapped at twelve from Morocco and enslaved in Charleston, and a grandfather who was German Jewish?
• Leon Greenman was reportedly the only Englishman sent to Auschwitz?
• English dramatist Edward Rose published The Rose Reader, "a new way of teaching to read," that only used words that were spelled as they sounded?

Facts on topics related to English

English language

• 16 of the 72 fiction authors with at least 100 million copies of their works in print did not write in English, and 16 of the 72 are women?
• 92% of students at West London's Villiers High School do not speak English as their first language?
• Andrew Carnegie (pictured) founded the Simplified Spelling Board in 1906, with the aim of making English the world language by addressing its difficult spelling?
• botanist Henry Lyte's Niewe Herball of 1578 was an English translation of the 1564 Cruydeboeck of Rembert Dodoens printed in Antwerp with the woodcuts of the original edition?
• children's book publisher Kane/Miller published the English language edition of Everyone Poops?
• Chilean Canadian writer Carmen Rodriguez publishes much of her work in both English and Spanish, and that she herself is responsible for their translation?
• Dutch linguist Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk published a Batak-Dutch dictionary to enable him to translate the Bible into Batak in 1861, and his posthumous trilingual Kawi-Balinese-Dutch dictionary was republished in English in 1971?
• Dutch rocker Wally Tax learned English by age 11 by working as a pimp for American sailors in the Port of Amsterdam?
• Edyta Górniak sang part of "To Nie Ja" in English at the dress rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Contest 1994, which almost caused the song to be disqualified?
• English once had a four-form yes and no system, employed by Shakespeare and others, instead of the two-form system that it has today?