Gin and tonic isn’t just the #SWF summer drink of choice. It’s a drink with a storied — and controversial — past. It’s a drink that once made Winston Churchill (no newbie to the drinking game) claim, “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.”

Ah, Empire. Gather round, children, pour yourselves a drink, and I’ll tell you about a time when empire was more than just a must-watch TV drama on FOX.

John Roosevelt was only five when his father contracted polio in 1921. The disease robbed the future president of the use of his legs and left him mostly wheelchair-bound.

And John, the youngest child, was not having it.

As the Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, Scottish parliament was “bought and sold for English gold.” But the reason Scotland was broke … that’s a story you’d never guess.

Women stepped up to fill construction roles during World War II and built the Waterloo Bridge. So why have they been left out of the story?