United Kingdom

The United Kingdom is a country in northwestern Europe. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. People often call it the UK for short. The country is made up of four parts: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The first three share an island called Great Britain. Northern Ireland sits on a smaller island to the west.

About 67 million people live in the UK. The capital is London, a city of nearly 9 million people on the River Thames. Other big cities include Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, and Cardiff. The country covers about 94,000 square miles. That is a little smaller than the state of Oregon, but packed with many times more people.

The UK is a kingdom, which means it has a king or queen. Today the monarch is King Charles III. But the king does not actually run the country. That job belongs to Parliament and the Prime Minister. Parliament meets in a building in London called the Palace of Westminster, famous for its big clock tower holding the bell known as Big Ben. This kind of government, where a monarch shares power with elected leaders, is called a constitutional monarchy.

For a long stretch of history, the UK was the most powerful country in the world. Starting in the 1600s, it built the British Empire. At its biggest, around 1920, the empire ruled about a quarter of all the land on Earth and a quarter of all the people. The saying was that "the sun never sets on the British Empire," because it was always daytime somewhere in it. Most of those colonies became independent countries during the 20th century.

The UK also helped change the world in other ways. The Industrial Revolution began there in the 1700s, with factories, steam engines, and railroads. English became a global language partly because of the empire. British writers like William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and J. K. Rowling are read everywhere. British bands like The Beatles shaped modern music.

The weather is famously cloudy and rainy, though it is rarely very hot or very cold. The land includes rolling green farmland, rocky coasts, the highlands of Scotland, and the mountains of Wales. People drive on the left side of the road, not the right. They drink a lot of tea, about 100 million cups each day.

In 2020, the UK left the European Union after a close vote called Brexit. The decision still shapes the country's trade, travel, and politics today.