Earlier this week the last coal-fired power plant in the U.K. shuttered for good. Coal is no longer used as a significant source of fuel in a country that was built on it.

Which left me with some very strange feelings. I grew up in the British East Midlands and while I did not personally live in coal country…

Coal country was always on our mind because coal was where industry started. Coal built the Empire, for…well, mostly for worse.