On October 14, 1066, two armies clashed on a hill in southern England. On one side: King Harold and his Anglo-Saxon English soldiers. On the other: William, Duke of Normandy, who had crossed the English Channel from France to claim the English throne. By the end of the day, Harold was dead - possibly killed by an arrow to the eye - and William had won.
That single battle changed England forever. William and his Norman nobles took over the country, and French became the language of kings, lords, courts and castles for the next 300 years. English peasants kept speaking English, but tons of French words got mixed in. Animals on the farm kept Anglo-Saxon names (cow, pig, sheep) while the meat on the table got French ones (beef, pork, mutton).
Today about a third of all the words in English are borrowed from French - almost all because the Normans won at Hastings. The fight is so famous it’s literally woven into a 230-foot embroidered cloth called the Bayeux Tapestry, which still survives almost 1,000 years later.
