In fact, on a similar note, I only recently learned that the main cause of death in ancient Egypt was ... cancer.
This kind of information bit always helps me put humanity in the right perspective.
Cromwell, in the 1640's, did not want to overthrow the rule of rich landowners. He just wanted to have the freedom to impose his religious views on those who disagreed.
The ideas of the Levellers, who wanted a more egalitarian society, were repressed as firmly by the Army Generals as they would have been by the King.
The Glorious Revolution of 1689-90 was not a popular revolution, but an arrangement by the nobility to fire the Catholic divine right monarch and replace him with a Protestant constitutional one.
Neither of these upheavals was like the revolutions of 1848 in continental Europe.
The British counterpart of 1848 was the Chartist Movement. It never became strong enough to plausibly threaten revolution, against political opponents who were less reactionary and more responsive to popular pressure than those who ruled in other countries.
