How Brits Fail To Remember, Remember The 5th of November [Guy Fawkes Day]

MORE THAN one in ten Britons don't know which famous landmark Guy Fawkes failed to blow up.

A staggering 13 per cent of people could not identify the Houses of Parliament as the target of the infamous Gunpowder Plot.

Three per cent of clueless participants even named the London Eye as Fawkes' target - even though it was erected almost 400 years later - a figure that, shockingly, rises to eight per cent among London residents.

One in 20 thought the religious conspirator - who was captured in a cellar beneath the House of Lords on 5 November, 1605 with 36 barrels of gunpowder - tried to blow up The Tower of London.

Other UK landmarks named in the survey of 2,000 British adults include Stonehenge, 10 Downing Street and Edinburgh Castle.

Women were more clued up on their Bonfire Night history than men, with 90 per cent correctly selecting the Houses of Parliament, compared to only 83 per cent of males.

Had the plot - masterminded by Catholic rebel Thomas Catesby - to blow up Parliament been successful, King James I, his son and nearly every bishop, MP and Lord in the country would have been killed.

Instead it failed, and Fawkes was hanged, drawn and quartered months later after being tortured for the names of his conspirators. It's said that he avoided the final stage of his punishment by leaping from the scaffold and breaking his neck.

A staggering 13 per cent of people could not identify the Houses of Parliament as the target of the infamous Gunpowder Plot. Three per cent of clueless participants even named the London Eye as Fawkes' target - even though it was erected almost 400 years later - a figure that, shockingly, rises to eight per cent among London residents.

One in 20 thought the religious conspirator - who was captured in a cellar beneath the House of Lords on 5 November, 1605 with 36 barrels of gunpowder - tried to blow up The Tower of London. Other UK landmarks named in the survey of 2,000 British adults include Stonehenge, 10 Downing Street and Edinburgh Castle....

In 1605, 13 young men planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament in what is now called "the Gunpowder Plot". The Gunpowder Plot came about after Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603. English Catholics, who had been persecuted under her rule, were bitterly disappointed when her successor, James I, who had a Catholic mother, failed to be more tolerant of their religion. Their leader Robert Catesby decided to blow up the Houses of Parliament, hoping to kill the King, the Prince of Wales, and the MPs who were making life difficult for Catholics.
Among 13 young men was Guy Fawkes, Britain's most notorious traitor and Roman Catholic convert. He was arrested in Parliament's cellar with 36 barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes was tried, convicted, and executed for treason.
Even now, four hundred years later, the reigning monarch only enters the Parliament once a year for the State Opening of Parliament. And before the opening, according to custom, the Yeomen of the Guard searches the cellars of the Palace of Westminster.

“In View, a humble Vaudevillian Veteran cast Vicariously as both Victim and Villain by the Vicissitudes of fate.
This Visage, no mere Veneer of Vanity is a Vestige of the Vox populi, now Vacant, Vanished.
However, this Valorous Visitation of a bygone Vexation stands Vivified and has Vowed to Vanquish these Venal and Virulent Vermin Vanguarding Vice and Vouchsafing the Violently Vicious and Voracious Violation of Volition.
The only Verdict is Vengeance, a Vendetta…held as a Votive not in Vain, for the Value and Veracity of such…shall one day Vindicate the Vigilant and the Virtuous.
Verily, this Vichyssoise of Verbiage Veers most Verbose.
So let me simply add that it’s my Very good honor to meet you……and you may call me V.”

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