Georges-Eugene Haussmann is most widely remembered for the massive project of renovation that he undertook to reshape the urban layout of Paris. He was commissioned to do so by Napoleon III and set out a massive restructuring of Parisian avenues, public works, parks, and buildings. The modern city of Paris is still very much in his image.

Jeremy Bentham is considered to be the founder of the philosophical tradition of utilitarianism. He was a philosopher of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who advocated for individual legal rights for all members of society. He also is often credited as being the earliest advocate for the welfare state. In the welfare state, the government takes care of the needs of those who cannot take care of themselves. This emerged first in Britain and France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and is currently a feature of many European societies.

Steam power was already being used in mining, heavy industry, and to power trains when in the 1830s innovators like Isambard Kingdom Brunel turned their attentions to powering ocean going ships. The Great Western Steamship Company was established and in 1838 made the first transatlantic steamship crossing from Bristol to New York. It is important to know that in the first half of the nineteenth century, Bristol was probably the biggest port city in England, but by the second half, it had been replaced by Liverpool and Manchester.

The Factory Act of 1833 was primarily concerned with regulating the hours of children working in factories in urban Britain. Child labor was common practice throughout the Industrial Revolution, and the Factory Act sought to limit the abuses of child labor by limiting children younger than fourteen to no more than eight hours of labor a day and children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen to no more than twelve hours of labor a day.

Hadrian's Wall separated Rome's Britain from those to the North known as Picts who would later be known as Scots. Little is known about the Picts who were called such because they painted their faces. This tradition carried through to their Scot descendants.

Poor Laws had been common in British society since the fourteenth century and were generally designed to provide economic relief for the poorest members of British society; however, by the 1830s, the cost of maintaining Poor Laws had spiralled to the point where the elite of British society were no longer comfortable with them. The New Poor Laws were designed to dramatically reduce the cost of providing for the poor by making life in the workhouses so arduous that only the really desperate would seek aid. Unsurprisingly, they were met with widespread disdain.

The temperance movement spread around Britain in the nineteenth century as many religious leaders and middle-class women began to speak out against the evils of alcohol. Many women believed that alcohol was responsible for many of social ills such as the mistreatment of women, the idleness of some men, and the fact that so many young children were growing up on the streets or without a father. Despite early success of the temperance movement, prohibition movements never spread in Britain like they did in the United States.

The city of Manchester in the Northwest of England grew spectacularly during the Industrial Revolution. Much of this growth was caused by the construction of canals that connected Manchester directly to the ocean and to many other manufacturing centers in the country. This allowed Manchester to circumvent the city of Liverpool, causing widespread job loss in Liverpool and contributing to a rivalry that still exists to this day. Manchester became, for a time, the biggest industrial port in the world.

The nineteenth century in Britain witnessed the explosion of the Industrial Revolution, but it also witnessed the growth of a movement to reform political and social injustices exacerbated by the industrialization. The first successful attempt to regulate factory conditions was passed in 1819. It prohibited children younger than nine from working in factories and set a maximum twelve-hour work day for children aged between nine and sixteen.

In 1867 Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and in doing so revolutionized the nature and destructive capabilities of warfare. It was the first highly powerful explosive that could be safely contained and detonated when required. It allowed for rapid innovations in weaponry, particularly in artillery. Nobel is said to have been distraught at the realization of his invention and founded the Nobel Prize as a way to contribute some positive energy to the world.