1 Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs: HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT STEAM POWER THOUGH?
2 Isaac Newton: It’s obvious. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Boil water and you produce pressure that can do work.
3 Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs: YOU NEVER WROTE ABOUT IT THOUGH.
4 Isaac Newton: If your tea kettle exploded in your face you wouldn’t want to write much about it either.

All proper British people have tea kettles, of course.

One of the interesting things about the voltage difference of mains power between countries is that the mains power supply in the USA, with only 120 volts, provides less power than countries like the UK or Australia (230 volts). This is mostly important for the essential British appliance, the electric kettle. These devices are exceedingly common in the UK (and Australia) - basically every house has one. But I gather from my research that they are rare to the point of being virtually unknown in the USA. The reason being that with the lower voltage they take much longer to boil water to make a cup of tea (or instant coffee or whatever).

Instead, I believe that those US residences that have any form of kettle have an unpowered metal one that is placed onto a stove hotplate. But apparently many US residences don't even have that, and people resort to boiling water either in a saucepan or in the microwave.

To your typical Brit, this is akin to living in the Stone Age.