Portal:United Kingdom/Did you know/August 2009

... that when Captain Robert Corbet suggested that captains be allowed to flog lieutenants, Rear-Admiral Edward Buller (pictured) declared that admirals should therefore flog captains?
... that astronomer William Herschel was the first organist at the Octagon Chapel in Bath?
... that the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Badsworth was named after a fox-hunt in Yorkshire and adopted by the town of Batley, following a Warship Week campaign in March 1942?
... that Saint Ninian, the subject of Ailred of Rievaulx's Life of Saint Ninian, is an "unhistorical doppelgänger" of the real-life British churchman Finnian?
... that Gordon Brown's independent advisor on ministerial conduct, Sir Philip Mawer who was given a knighthood in 2002, has also been a dame?
... that in 1904, the whitewash was removed from the west wall of St. George's church, Trotton, leading to the discovery of an unprecedented 600-year-old wall painting?
... that John Ruskin's "wretched rant" influenced architects, artists and ecclesiologists?