I realized today that I was way off about the feud between Lancashire and Yorkshire: it dates way back at least to the Wars of the Roses.  When I realized this, I felt like a total idiot.  But I'm discovering more and more just how limited my high school history classes were.  We mostly focused on American history and European history that affected American history.  And I feel like even more of an idiot because of an experience I had when we were in Haworth.  We went to this tea room, and the owner asked us where we were all from.  When I told him I was from Virginia, he immediately mentioned Fredericksburg.  This caught me completely off guard because 1. I always expect for people to talk about Jamestown when I say I'm from Virginia, and 2. I live near and go to school in Fredericksburg.  He was "right on the money,' so to speak.  He told me that he was a big (American) Civil War buff.  Now, I'm used to meeting Civil War buffs (sometimes I'm convinced that everyone in Fredericksburg is a Civil War buff), but I never expected to meet one on this side of the Atlantic.  He went on to list off Civil War battles, and it was at this point that I realized I never paid enough attention in history class.  I had to confess that I wasn't familiar with the battles he had mentioned.  I felt like a complete failure.  

But I've had other experiences with the Brits that have made me feel a bit smarter.  The first was when a guy asked where we were all from.  Once we had all answered, he confessed that he had no idea where those places were in the U.S.  He said the only area in the U.S. he was really familiar with was San Francisco (he had lived there for a while when he was little).  The second had to do with the GBP symbol.  I jokingly spelled my name as £isa Cart€r (in the tradition of Ke$ha). One of my British acquaintances corrected me, saying that the pound symbol should go in the place of a "E," not an "L."  But I looked it up, and the pound symbol actually comes from the old Roman unit of weight, the libra.  Therefore, it is an "L," not an "E."  (I believe this is where we also get our abbreviation for a pound in weight, "lb.")  I didn't correct him on it because I didn't want to embarrass him, but it was comforting to know that the British don't always know everything about their own culture either.