Lesser known facts about Sunderland and its people



Here’s a curious link that I read about last year: near the end of the Boxer Rebellion of 1860, British troops under Lord Elgin burnt down the Chinese Summer Palace - a complex of buildings and palaces about five times the size of the Forbidden City, whose loss is still a huge issue in China.
BBC article

This was in direct retaliation for the Chinese torture and murder of a 20-strong negotiation party - containing the renowned Times foreign correspondent Thomas William Bowlby…who grew up in Sunderland and was educated at the Grange School.
Wikipedia biography
 
When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in the theatre he was watching a play called Our American Cousin which was written by a playwright called Tom Taylor who was from Sunderland.
Just read in todays Washington Post that Lincoln’s new bodyguard nipped into the pub next door during the performance! He nivver turned back up until 6AM the next day. He was even put back on White House duty! As you were.
 
A bloke from Millfield survived the sinking of the titanic AND there was a geezer whose family name was sunderland on board also.
 
Kate Adie is always associated with Sunderland and she was schooled here but was actually born in Whitley Bay and was adopted by a Sunderland couple and then studied at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Is that true? She's been very vague about her personal life apart from that her real father was Irish and she was conceived in Lincolnshire while her mother's husband was away in the army during WWII.
Most references say she was actually born in Sunderland but I'm sure I heard her say that her adoptive parents had to travel south to go through the adoption.
 

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