After 900 years, the Bayeux Tapestry returns to England and goes on display in London

0:00In England, students memorize one date above all else, 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest and epic invasion by France. The oldest depiction of that history is on a tapestry that's normally in a small French museum, but this year it's journeyed to London, and tomorrow it goes on public display there for the first time in more than 900 years, and here's Lauren Freier, got a sneak peak. 1066 is everywhere. People joke it's the country's most used pin number. It's on TV commercials for car insurance. 1066, or visit our website. 1066 was the battle of Hastings, which the British Museum calls, when William the Conqueror led a Norman army to kill the Anglo-Saxon king Harold with an arrow through his eye. It's celebrated in one of the oldest pieces of war propaganda. A giant comic strip embroidered on linen depicting the Norman Conquest in bright colors.

1:04It's a few feet high and nearly 230 feet long. That's longer than a 747. It was commissioned by the victors. So let's have a bigger one than anyone's happy for it was for Norman eyes. Historian Gail Owen Crocker says the tapestry was commissioned by William's half brother, the Bishop of Bio in Normandy, France. And that's where it's been for more than 900 years. But its intricate scenes of horsemen in battle, royal banquets and mythical beasts were actually stitched on the losing side in England. Every stretch passed between some woman's finger and some. Probably by seamstress Nuns, who snuck in subversive insults Owen Crocker says. On the face of it, it's it's gladly telling the story of the way the Norman historians did. But if you look at which images depict William and his half brother, Bishop, they tend to be biblical villains. And that's one reason Brits love this tapestry. Another is that their modern day monarch

2:08descends from this battle. King Charles, when he saw it, said, it also tells the story of the beginning of what I like to think of as the French side of my family's history in these islands. After years of diplomacy, last year, French President Immanuel Macron announced, France will loans United Kingdom's Bio tapestry. But it was quite a feat to get it here. It's a nearly thousand year old piece of cloth that almost met its demise as a wagon covering in the French Revolution. It survived Napoleon, the Nazis, and plunder by the common clothesmoth, while folded for centuries in storage. It's got a checkered conservation history to put it mildly and less than a hundred years ago, the Nazis had it rolled up on a bobbin. Curator Millie Horton, inch oversaw its transport from France. Test runs with replica, everything was considered vibrations, the temperature, the humidity. In the dead of night, in a refrigerated, shock absorber truck, squishy bits of fabric in between each bit so that

3:15it didn't rub against itself. Through a tunnel under the English channel and finally here to the British Museum. When it was first taken out of the case and edwards, the confessor and was sort of waving at you from the 11th century, it was the most incredible feeling in the world. The museum expects this to be its most popular exhibition ever. Before the crowds, I got a tour. It starts with this musical installation. You come down these stairs and it's sort of illuminated. Wow, walking alongside it, it feels like a medieval action movie. This is where William, the conqueror's soldiers sink into quicksand. There's a sword through somebody's tummy, they're decapitating someone here. And there he is, King Harold of England. And through his eye is that arrow that changed this country's history forever. Lauren Freyer and PR News London.