Uninvited on October 14th 1066 an army of Normans landed on the English south coast. Defeating the Saxon armies led by King Harold, the Normans imposed their rule, their customs and most importantly, their language on the indigenous population.
For the next 950 years the latin language akin to French has been the basis of most legal and official usage, whereas the Anglo-Saxon languages have remained undimmed as the basis of the language spoken by the "ordinary" people of Britain. This mixture of two languages is what gives English its great wealth of vocabulary. The Norman invasion may have been one in the eye for King Harold, but those migrants crossing from what is now France greatly enriched our culture, perhaps an important lesson for our times.
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