"This World": 47 Things That Happened on the Day of the Brexit Referendum

Let's look at everything that happened on the day that shaped history.

1. Heavy rain and flooding hit much of Britain over the past two days, so plenty of people in London and southern England waded through rain and floodwater to vote. Some polling stations had water on the floor but could still more or less function; others flooded so badly they had to close, sending nearby residents elsewhere to cast their ballots. Even so, in the words of the British press, the rain and floods could not dampen people's enthusiasm for voting (though putting it that way is a little... odd?).

1. One trending referendum topic on Twitter urged people to bring their own pen, because a pencil mark made at the polling station could supposedly be rubbed out and changed. A bit conspiracy-minded, but it does show how seriously Britons took this vote.

Officials replied graciously: voters were free to use a pencil or a pen, and if anyone forgot to bring one, they would happily provide it.

And some people sniffed that pencils are all made in the EU, so of course you should vote with a pen the British made themselves.

1. Jumping back to something earlier in the week. On Wednesday a group of French people took the Eurostar to Britain and handed out croissants and love letters at King's Cross station, hoping to "bribe" the British into staying in the EU. Under British law, handing out food and drink during a campaign period is in fact illegal. Still, judging by social media, people were glad to get them.

1. What does a national referendum look like? Launderettes, pubs, hotels, yacht clubs, beauty salons, garages, even bakeries turned into polling stations. In some small villages, the polling station was a villager's own garage or living room.

1. Britain's big newspapers split into clear camps over this referendum, and their front-page headlines said it all.

The Times, the Mirror, the Independent and Scotland's Metro backed Remain; the Daily Mail and the Sun backed Leave. The New York Times, for its part, anxiously called for Remain too. Once the result was out, the latest front pages of the Daily Mail and the Sun looked delighted. Then again, front pages are printed in advance, so they may have had that result ready for a while.

1. The pound rode a roller coaster. Nothing more to say — look at the chart.

1. Bankers spent last night betting a billion pounds on the referendum in the currency markets.

Now that the result is Leave — the pound down, the yen and the Singapore dollar up — they presumably made money.

Before the vote, by the way, long queues had already formed at some of Britain's currency-exchange windows.

1. Japan's stock market was frightened into a circuit breaker. After the result came out, Nikkei 225 futures fell 8.1%, tripping the circuit breaker and halting Japanese stock futures trading for 10 minutes. Japan was not alone; markets elsewhere were rattled by Brexit too.

1. Once Leave was confirmed, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage was overjoyed. He is the beaming man on the front pages of the Daily Mail and the Sun. He called the result "a victory for ordinary, decent people," and said the failing EU project was now about to come crashing down.

1. David Cameron, on the other hand, was miserable — he had backed Remain. He did not give a televised address right away, and the British public started questioning him at once. Apparently a party leader isn't even allowed to hide for a moment and feel sad.

1. Some critics then pressed Cameron to resign immediately. But a letter signed by 48 Conservative MPs backing him to stay on soon leaked. Although they had chosen to leave the EU, the MPs wrote, they still thanked Cameron for giving everyone this chance to vote, and whatever the public decided, he could carry on leading them. Boris Johnson's name was on that list too.

1. Hot as the referendum was, Britons still made time to check what Spice Girl Victoria Beckham was wearing. On Thursday, voting day, she turned up on the streets of Manhattan in a bright yellow trench coat — and even that got column inches; stars will be stars. Wait, doesn't she need to go home and vote?

1. On the subject of missing the point: someone watching the referendum livestream tweeted that a polling station's front door looked just like Hitler's face — and got more than 5,000 retweets and likes for it...

1. With the results only half declared, someone looked at the map and said how much it resembled a pig in a hat.

1. Someone else spotted three young people on the BBC's live coverage who looked just like Harry Potter, Ron and Hermione... Hey, what exactly are you all paying attention to?

1. Back to pens for a moment — someone really did make a joke of it. Cameron, grim-faced, on the phone: "How's it looking?... What?... They're using pens?!?!... OH MY GOD!"

1. And no matter how big the referendum got, the shopping channel went on selling things as usual.

1. The results were declared region by region, and Remain did hold the lead for a while — when Gibraltar was the first to report an overwhelming vote to stay, for instance. Gibraltar sits next to Spain and belongs to continental Europe anyway, so backing Remain made perfect sense. It's just that its position may be awkward now.

2. Scotland, by contrast, had it all worked out. Before voting even ended, Scotland's First Minister said publicly that if the UK voted to leave the EU, Scotland would hold another referendum to leave the UK. Either way, they want to stay in the EU.

1. City of London bankers may have made a killing gambling through the night before the Leave result, but with Leave confirmed, the banks will still pull out on a large scale. So said the City of London's Policy Chairman, just after 2 p.m. today.

1. Labour MP John Mann told the BBC he thought the result proved that Britain's classes were splitting apart. Surveys showed Remain voters were mostly young, university-educated white-collar workers, while Leave voters were mostly middle-aged and older blue-collar workers with less schooling.

1. Other European countries, by the way, were a little astonished that Britain gave the whole country a day off to vote. — Mostly out of envy, I suspect.

2. Back to the Remain and Leave camps. If you followed the earlier coverage you'll know support for Remain ran very high among Londoners, probably because Remain voters cluster there. Once Leave was confirmed, a movement calling for London's independence appeared. A new party was founded on Twitter for the purpose, called London Independence — LIP for short.

Hmm... or London could just join Scotland. Geography is no obstacle: Gibraltar is much farther away and still counts as British territory. And LIP's Twitter account really has hinted at exactly that.

1. Throughout the referendum, the American Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan live-tweeted the count. Nobody knew why. Her account did not appear to have been hacked, either. All you can say is that she truly cares about world politics.

1. Guess which big name was on his way to Britain at this stirring historical moment. Donald Trump! He tweeted early in the morning that he was flying to Scotland for the opening of his resort. Well... is he sure the Scots, who badly want to stay in the EU, won't have something to say to a man who preaches deporting immigrants day in and day out and feels such kinship with the Leave camp?

1. More on conspiracy theories. Remember the pencil-versus-pen business above? Fourteen hours ago a firm called YouGov published a survey finding that plenty of people believed the referendum result could be fixed behind the scenes, with each side sure the other would play dirty. 46% of Remain voters thought Leave voters would cheat; 28% of Leave voters believed outright that the government would send MI5 to swing the result.

1. In the last hours before the vote, some Remain-leaning outlets ran roundabout pieces on the theme of "you have no idea how much the EU matters to us" — things like "guess which EU country these fruits and vegetables come from."

2. Before the referendum Cameron even went to a school to explain to children why Britain should stay in the EU. The press joked that he probably didn't know children can't vote.

1. Only the night before, people were still marvelling at the Icelandic commentator's call after Iceland beat Austria at the Euros: "Schwarzenegger, Mozart, Beethoven, von Trapp — your boys took a hell of a beating!" Next to him, the Chinese sportscaster Huang Jianxiang suddenly looks several sizes smaller.

2. Everyone knows British bookmakers had a book open on this referendum. William Hill, one of the largest in the world, set the odds at 1-to-0.44 for Remain and 1-to-1.625 for Leave, while Ladbrokes, another big one, set them at 1-to-0.4 for Remain and 1-to-1.75 for Leave — both were clearly backing Remain to win. So with Leave declared the winner, the bookmakers presumably... lost? Though this is supposed to be a business that can't lose. Maybe they just... won less?

3. Nigel Farage, as it turns out, went through his own highs and lows. When the early results showed Remain ahead he nearly lost heart, and even told reporters he thought Remain would win.

4. Oh, and with something this big happening, Twitter's queen J.K. Rowling weighed in too, of course. She lives in Scotland, so her line was: "Scotland will seek independence now. Cameron's legacy may be split in two. I hope neither happens." And just now she said something sadder still: "I don't think I've ever wanted magic more."

1. An aside: the grandmother who is extremely polite to Google, the one we wrote about a couple of days ago, has joined Facebook, and she has posted something. She wrote: "I don't know where you are from, but I hope you have fun playing in your rain boots. Grandma, xx." Thousands of likes within moments — Grandma really is adorable and popular.

And the rain-boot joke comes from Britain's recent downpours, which left young people trudging through mud in tall rubber boots at the Glastonbury festival.

1. Then, during yesterday's voting, a grandmother named Teresa Hicks was asked to leave a polling station over what she had on. This is what she wore: a Union Jack stuck in her hair, an England flag over her shoulders, sunglasses printed with the Union Jack, and a sign telling everyone to vote Leave. Electoral commission rules bar voters from wearing anything with a political message, so out she went.

1. Speaking of grandmothers, has anyone heard the remarks the Queen is rumoured to have made about the referendum? The Queen is not supposed to influence politics, so people love to pass around what she says in private. Someone recently claimed that at a private gathering she said this to her guests: "Give me three good reasons why Britain must be part of the European Union." Ah, she really does sound like a Leave supporter. Buckingham Palace, naturally, denied it flatly.

2. Er, and right at voting time, the flooding in southeast England was serious too. Rail and roads saw widespread delays and blockages. Some say more people in this region backed Remain, so a natural disaster may have decided Britain's fate directly.

1. A week before the referendum, Jo Cox, an MP who supported Remain, was assassinated by a Leave supporter. The news hit hard. Then, the day before yesterday, during Cox's memorial, a plane trailing a banner urging people to vote "Leave" flew over Trafalgar Square in London. That drew plenty of criticism: whatever your politics, it was a gross disrespect to the dead.

1. Remember Anonymous, the hacker group that said it would fight ISIS? It has just announced that it is forming a political party to change the world's political systems. It will absolutely refuse, it says, to use the intimidation and strong-arm tactics of today's parties, and will work for the human rights of all humanity — water, food, safety, housing, healthcare, education and other basic needs — and for human solidarity.

1. While everyone was arguing about the referendum, the well-known British singer Robbie Williams announced that he was rejoining his old band, Take That, for their 25th-anniversary world tour. Er... you're sure you want to announce that now? Never seen a performer so intent on burying his own headline.

2. On Leave, one more important figure has to be mentioned: former London mayor Boris Johnson. Everyone knows he is a Leave supporter, and he spent months touring the country urging Britons to leave the EU. This morning, the moment the Leave news broke, a man in traditional Scottish dress turned up outside his house to play the bagpipes.

1. Enough about Britain; let's see how things stand on the EU side. Last Friday, European Council President Donald Tusk spoke with enormous confidence in Brussels, home of the EU's headquarters: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Nobody could tell what the line meant, and it left plenty of listeners staring.

Oh, and he spoke again after today's result: "Until Britain formally leaves the EU, EU law will still apply within Britain. I mean all of it — rights and obligations."

1. Just as everyone was fretting about the economic crisis Britain might face after voting Leave, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney spoke up: the bank would "not hesitate" to put up 250 billion pounds to steady the markets.

2. Ukraine's prime minister had his say too, mostly a call for Europe to stay united and for EU members to hold tightly together and revive the union. Understandable — getting into the EU took some doing.

3. On Weibo, someone dug up a remark the Chinese military commentator Zhang Zhaozhong made long ago: the refugee problem would very likely end up splitting Europe. The man's a seer!

4. Standard & Poor's has just announced that, since Britain chose to leave, it will soon cut the country's AAA rating. For some reason Tusk's line above came back to me: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It fits unexpectedly well here. I didn't mean to...

1. Ah — before I could finish writing this, Cameron announced his resignation.

He only just won a second term as prime minister, too. My heart goes out to him.

His statement went like this: "I have always believed that staying in the EU was better for Britain's development, but the people have chosen to leave, and I honestly don't see how I can go on as prime minister leading a country out of the EU. I will resign before the Conservative Party conference in October, when a new Conservative leader will be chosen. For now I will only inform the EU of the British people's decision, but I will not begin negotiations with it. All future negotiations with the EU, including when and how to trigger the exit clause under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, will be left entirely to the new prime minister!"

1. No sooner had Cameron announced his resignation than the Daily Mail was already suggesting Boris could be prime minister within a few months.

1. And on Twitter a thread quickly opened on what new job would suit Cameron. Sure enough, the top answer was pig farming (a nod to the reported story that Cameron molested a dead pig at university). Someone else offered: "I've got some dishes for him to wash." You are all terrible people.

Cover image via bitcoinez.com