New and Revised—A Selected List of Twelve Culturally Shaping English Gifts to the World, including several directly associated with Christmas to keep it festive.
1. Physician Edward Jenner developed the world’s first successful vaccine in 1796 by inoculating an eight-year-old boy with cowpox to protect him from the far deadlier smallpox. Jenner had observed that milkmaids who were exposed to cowpox seemed immune to smallpox, a disease characterized by fever, fatigue, and a severe rash with pus-filled lesions that could be fatal. Cowpox, caused by a virus related to the variola virus responsible for smallpox, produced only mild symptoms, making it a safer method to confer immunity. Jenner’s experiment was a complete success, demonstrating that exposure to cowpox could protect against smallpox. He coined the term “vaccine” from the Latin vacca, meaning cow, in honor of the disease that enabled this groundbreaking discovery. Jenner is known as the “father of immunology” because his work laid the foundation for modern vaccination practices and has been credited with saving more lives than any other single individual in history.
2. Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843, promoting Christian virtues, popularizing seasonal customs, and helping establish turkey as the centerpiece of Christmas dinner in England. Through the character of Ebenezer Scrooge—now synonymous with miserliness and lack of generosity—Dickens portrayed a compelling journey of redemption from judgment to grace. As The Charles Dickens Page notes, Dickens “probably had more influence on the way we celebrate Christmas today than any single individual in human history.”
3. Henry Cole, a civil servant and founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum, sent the world’s first commercial Christmas card in 1843. The card was designed by his friend, artist John Callcott Horsley, and featured a festive family scene with the greeting: “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.” Cole commissioned the card to promote Rowland Hill’s Penny Post service. Hill was a postal reformer who introduced uniform penny postage, making mail affordable for everyone. The card helped popularize the sending of Christmas greetings and contributed to establishing the tradition of the commercial Christmas card, which remains a central part of holiday celebrations today.
4. Eliza Acton, a pioneering cook and food writer, introduced the first major printed use of the name “Christmas pudding” in her influential 1845 cookbook, Modern Cookery for Private Families. Drawing on traditional medieval plum pudding recipes, Acton offered a refined version with precise ingredient measurements and clear instructions—a revolutionary approach at the time. Her cookbook was notable for being one of the first to list ingredients separately and specify quantities, times, and methods, setting a new standard in recipe writing. Acton’s Christmas pudding recipe included suet, flour, breadcrumbs, raisins, currants, minced apples, candied peel, eggs, sugar, and spices, which were thoroughly mixed, tied in a floured cloth, and boiled (steamed) for several hours to achieve the proper texture. This method produced a rich, light pudding that became a model for Victorian Christmas desserts. Fellow English cook and TV personality Delia Smith has called Acton “the best writer of recipes in the English language,” underscoring her lasting influence on English culinary tradition.
5. Tom Smith was a London confectioner who opened a shop on Goswell Road, Clerkenwell, in the 1840s. During a trip to Paris, he encountered the French “bon-bon”—a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of tissue paper—and brought the idea back to England. At first, Smith added love mottoes inside the wrappers, similar to fortune cookies, but by 1847 he had patented his first “cracker.” Inspired, according to legend, by the crackling sound of a log fire, he later introduced a “snap” mechanism in the 1860s made from two narrow paper strips—one coated with silver fulminate, the other with an abrasive surface. When pulled, friction creates a small explosion, producing the familiar “pop.” Smith’s son, Walter, later enhanced the crackers by adding decorative paper hats and sourcing novelties from Europe, America, and Japan. As the Victoria and Albert Museum notes: “During a trip to Paris, he discovered the French ‘bon bon,’ a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of tissue paper. Bonbons proved to be a hit at Christmas time, and to encourage year-round sales, Smith added a small love motto inside the wrapper. The inspiration to add the explosive ‘pop’ was supposedly sparked by the crackling sound of a log fire. Smith patented his first cracker device in 1847 and perfected the mechanism in the 1860s. It used two narrow strips of paper layered together, with silver fulminate painted on one side and an abrasive surface on the other. When pulled, friction created a small explosion. Tom’s son, Walter, added elaborate hats made of fancy paper and sourced novelties and gifts from Europe, America, and Japan.”
6. Thomas Hawksley, a civil engineer, pioneered the world’s first constant pressurised clean water supply in 1848–49, allowing people to access water simply by turning on a tap. This breakthrough saved countless lives during the 1848–49 cholera epidemic, during which Nottingham—Hawksley’s hometown—remained untouched by the disease. According to Waterworld magazine in the article “A Forgotten Hero: Thomas Hawksley – Waterworld”: “Through his ingenuity, Nottingham became one of the first places in the world to benefit from a pressurised supply of water available by the turn of a tap 24 hours a day. Hawksley’s pressurised system saved huge numbers of people when a cholera epidemic struck the country in 1848–9 – with Nottingham escaping the infection. In an earlier outbreak in 1832, he designed a cholera hospital, laid on a water supply, and even attended to the sick.” Hawksley’s innovations in water supply earned him international recognition, including knighthoods and tributes from countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Brazil, and helped establish modern principles for safe, accessible water worldwide.
7. Florence Nightingale revolutionized healthcare with the publication of Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not, in 1859. In this influential work, she advanced a professional and compassionate approach to patient care, emphasizing cleanliness, proper ventilation, nutrition, and the importance of educating families to support recovery at home. Nightingale also stressed the necessity of careful observation, record-keeping, and analysis—practices that laid the foundation for evidence-based nursing. In 1860, she founded the Nightingale Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, the first institution of its kind. This pioneering school became a global model for modern nursing education and played a central role in establishing nursing as a respected, structured, and scientifically informed profession.
8. Joseph Lister, a doctor and surgeon, revolutionized medicine by developing antiseptic surgery, in which he sprayed medical instruments, catgut, and bandages with a diluted solution of carbolic acid (phenol) to prevent infection. He became the first surgeon to perform an operation in a chamber sterilized using antiseptic methods, significantly increasing patient survival rates. “Lister, an English doctor and surgeon, became the first surgeon to perform an operation in a chamber sterilized with pulverized antiseptic. The result? More patients survived than ever before.” — The History of Listerine. His groundbreaking work earned him lasting recognition—Listerine mouthwash was named in his honor, as was the bacterial genus Listeria, which includes the species Listeria monocytogenes.
9. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, the earliest printed version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” appeared in London in 1780 in the illustrated children’s book Mirth Without Mischief. Presented as a chant—a cumulative rhyme used in a memory game—it was not originally set to music. Over time, both the lyrics and the tune evolved through oral tradition and various printed editions. The version familiar today is based largely on the 1909 musical arrangement by composer and baritone Frederic Austin, who introduced musical flourishes such as the drawn-out phrase “five gold rings” and made minor lyrical changes, including altering “colly birds” to “calling birds.” Austin’s melody and structure became the standard form of the carol, which includes the following twelve gifts:
A partridge in a pear tree
Two turtle doves
Three French hens
Four calling birds
Five gold rings
Six geese a-laying
Seven swans a-swimming
Eight maids a-milking
Nine ladies dancing
Ten lords a-leaping
Eleven pipers piping
Twelve drummers drumming
10, Harold Ridley is credited with designing the first intraocular lens (an artificial lens implant used in cataract surgery) and performing the first successful implantation on 29 November 1949 at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. The lens was made of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), chosen for its durability and biocompatibility. “Cataract surgery with intraocular lens (IOL) implantation has become the most common and most successful of all operations in medicine. His first cataract extraction with implantation of an IOL marked the beginning of a major change in the practice of ophthalmology.” — Indian Journal of Ophthalmology: “He Changed the World, So That We Might Better See It.” Ridley’s innovation transformed ophthalmology, making cataract surgery safer, more effective, and widely accessible, improving vision for millions worldwide.
11. Sir John Charnley, a pioneering orthopaedic surgeon, revolutionized modern medicine with his development of total hip replacement surgery. In 1962, at Wrightington Hospital in Lancashire, he performed the first successful “low-friction arthroplasty,” using a stainless steel femoral component, a polyethylene socket, and bone cement to restore mobility and relieve arthritis pain. Charnley also founded the Centre for Hip Surgery at Wrightington and introduced sterile laminar airflow systems, which transformed infection control in operating theatres. His influential textbook, The Closed Treatment of Common Fractures (1950), guided generations of surgeons. He was knighted in 1977 for his contributions to orthopaedics. As the British Society for Rheumatology notes: “Charnley’s contributions to orthopaedic sciences and surgery are so vast that it would be difficult to do justice when attempting to present more than a mere outline.”
12. Sir Peter Mansfield, a physicist and professor from Nottingham, developed the revolutionary Echo-Planar Imaging (EPI) method in the 1970s, dramatically increasing the speed of MRI scans. In 1974, he produced the first MRI images of a live human finger, followed by a full human torso in 1978. EPI enabled precise, non-invasive imaging of the brain, heart, and internal organs, transforming diagnostic medicine. His legacy continues at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre in Nottingham, home to the UK’s most powerful MRI scanner, funded by a £29.1 million government investment in 2018.
