Portal:United Kingdom/Did you know/October 2007

• ...that Mary Howitt (pictured) wrote The Spider and the Fly (the poem parodied in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and 120 other books, and translated Hans Christian Andersen?
• ...that Hampshire and England cricketer Derek Shackleton took over 100 wickets in 20 consecutive seasons of first-class cricket?
• ...that British farmer Sir Nigel Strutt, great-nephew of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Lord Rayleigh, was offered a peerage, but, like his great-great-grandfather, Joseph Holden Strutt, declined?
• ...that English inventor Edward Butler produced an early three-wheeled automobile capable of travelling up to 10 mph, but was prevented from adequately testing it because it exceeded the legislated speed limit of 4 mph at the time?