The United Kingdom government announced on 18 December 2000 that Wolverhampton would be granted city status. 10 things you might not know about Wolverhampton:
The city is named after Wulfrun, who founded the town in 985, and means "Wulfrūn's high or principal enclosure or farm". Hence, people from the city are called "Wulfrunians".
Wolverhampton is recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086 as being in the Hundred of Seisdon and the county of Staffordshire.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the town was one of the "staple towns" of the woollen trade. The coat of arms includes a woolpack, and there are street names which also date back to this time, including Woolpack Street, Woolpack Alley and several streets called “Fold” (Blossom's Fold, Farmers Fold, Townwell Fold and Victoria Fold).
A market was held here as early as 1179, although in 1204, King John got upset because Wolverhampton was holding regular markets without a royal charter. King Henry III granted a charter for a market and fair to the Lord of the Manor, Giles de Erdington, the Dean of Wolverhampton in 1258. The charter allowed for a weekly market on Wednesdays and a fair every year commencing on the vigil of the feast of St Peter and St Paul and lasting eight days.
There were two great fires in Wolverhampton; the first in April 1590, and the second in September 1696. They both started in what is known today as Salop Street. After the second fire, the city bought its first fire engine in 1703.
Wolverhampton has connections to The Gunpowder Plot. A number of the conspirators including Robert Catesby, the leader, took refuge here, at Hobeach House in Himley. Two men named Thomas Smart and John Holyhead of Rowely Regis were subsequently charged with sheltering them, and were executed in January 1606.
The Football club, Wolverhampton Wanderers, are the only club to have won all top national cups – the FA CUP (1893, 1908, 1949, 1960), the Football League Club (1974 and 1980), and Football League Trophy in 1988.
Wolverhampton was also a centre for the manufacture of Locks and Keys. Lock makers Charles and Jeremiah Chubb moved here from Hampshire in 1818. In 1851 Chubbs were making 30,000 locks a year without using machinery. In 1847 John Chubb was appointed "patent lock maker" to Queen Victoria.
Speaking of which, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent is known to have visited Wolverhampton in the 1830s and described it as "a large and dirty town" but one which received her "with great friendliness and pleasure". She came back some years later for the unveiling of a statue of Prince Albert.
At the 2011 census, Wolverhampton had a population of 249,470.
Character birthday
Jean-Paul Reynard, father of Basil Reynard (Fox). Working as a waiter in Paris, he met an English woman named Elaine and got her pregnant. His family insisted that he must marry her and she lived with the family until Basil was seven, at which time she and Jean-Paul separated and Elaine returned to England with their son. Father and son did not meet again until Basil was an adult. He is an accomplished skier and ski instructor both in France and later in Galorivia.
From A Jack To A King
A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.
A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.
Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.
Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.
When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.
A Tale of Two Sisters
During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.
Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.
As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.
Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?
Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?
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