Velcro
Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral invented his first touch fastener when, in 1941, he went for a walk in the woods and wondered why Burdock seeds clung to his coat and dog. He discovered it could be turned into something useful. He patented it in 1955 and subsequently refined and developed its practical manufacture until its commercial introduction in the late 1950s.
Patricroft
Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe was born in Patricroft in 1877. He was the first Englishman to make a powered flight (in 1908 at Brooklands), and the first Englishman to fly an all British machine a year later, on Hackney Marshes. He founded the Avro company, one of the world's first aircraft manufacturers, in 1910. Humphrey Verdon Roe, his brother, was co-founder of Avro and also co-founder of the first birth control clinic in Britain with Marie Stopes.