Useful dates in British history for the local historian or genealogist
. . . with a few others added in for good measure!

Send additions/corrections/comments please to John Owen Smith
My thanks to major contributors , who are acknowledged
Please note disclaimer at end

Frith's postcard dating list – Historical value of money in UK – Imperial measures – Glossary of Terms – Monarchs of England and their dates – What day of week did dates fall – Special days

BC4004

Oct 23: The beginning of Creation, as calculated by James Ussher (1581 –1656), Archbishop of Armagh and believed until Victorian times

BC3952

Mar 18: The beginning of Creation, as calculated by the Venerable Bede (673– 735)

BC551

Birth of Confucius

BC490

Battle of Marathon

BC240

First recorded sighting of Halley's comet

BC55

Aug 27: Caesar's first British expedition (second in BC54)

BC49

Jan 10 (of the Roman calendar): Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, signaling the start of civil war

BC46

Caesar institutes the Julian calendar by adding 90 days to the end of this year (came into force in January BC45)

BC45

Jan 1: The Julian calendar takes effect for the first time

BC44

Mar 15: Caesar assassinated in Rome

BC27

Jan 16: The title Augustus bestowed upon Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian

BC/AD

Since the Romans had no zero, there was no year AD0 (see AD525)

AD43

Roman Conquest of Britain begun by Emperor Claudius – Camulodunum (Colchester) captured and becomes first Roman Base in England

AD47

Fosse Way built

AD60

Revolt of Boudicca (Boadicea)

AD64

Jun: Great fire of Rome, lasted 9 days (Nero fiddles, etc!)

AD69

Year of the four emperors in Rome: Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian

AD79

Aug 24: (some say Oct 24) Mount Vesuvius erupts – the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash

c80–85

Campaign of Agricola in southern Scotland

c85

Battle of Mons Graupius, massive defeat of Caledonians by Roman forces

115

Roman Empire reaches its greatest extent under Trajan

122

Sep: Building of Hadrian's Wall begins (completed AD126)

c140

Antonine Wall built in central Scotland (completed circa AD143)

c150

Around this time, the Christian churches decided to express their divergence from the Roman system by starting the year on a different date, 25th March (this being the 'date of conception' of Christ in order for his birth to have been on 25th December) – see also 1582

180

Beginning of the 'decline of the Roman Empire' (Gibbon) – Defeat of Romans in Caledonia – they retreat behind Hadrian's Wall

207–11

Campaign of Severus in southern Scotland

247

1,000th anniversary of founding of Rome

304

St Alban first Christian martyr in Britain [Bede implies some date between 303 and 313]

321

Emperor Constantine I decrees a day of rest each week in the Roman Empire and calls it 'Sunday'

325

Council of Nicaea establishes basic Christian dogma

c350

St Ninian first to preach Christian religion in Scotland, arrives Solway Firth

367

Invasion of northern England by Picts and Scots

406/412

Probable end of Roman military occupation of Britain

418

'The Romans gathered all the gold-hords there were in Britain; some they hid in the earth so that no man might find them, and some they took with them to Gaul' – Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

c400 – c600

Migration and settlement of Angles, Jutes and Saxons

432

St Patrick begins mission to Ireland

449

Beginning of invasions by Jutes, Angles and Saxons – Hengist and Horsa invade

'The Angles were invited here by king Vortigern, and they came to Britain in three longships, landing at Ebbesfleet. [He] gave them territory in the southeast of this land on the condition that they fight the Picts. This they did, and had victory wherever they went. Then they sent to Angel and commanded more aid … they soon sent hither a greater host to help the others. Then came the men of three Germanic tribes: Old Saxons, Angles and Jutes. Of the Jutes come the people of Kent and the Isle of Wight; of the Old Saxons come the East-Saxons, South-Saxons and West-Saxons; of the Angles come the East Anglians, Middle Anglians, Mercians and all Northumbrians. Their war-leaders were two brothers, Hengist and Horsa … first of all they killed and drove away the king's enemies, then later they turned on the king and the British [mid-450s], destroying through fire and the sword's edge.' – Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

467

Chinese observe Halley's comet

c490

British check Anglo-Saxon advance at siege of Mount Badon (site unknown) – date uncertain: other sources say 520 and/or c.495, or simply 'some time in the decade before or after 500'

c500

Irish "Scots" arrived in western Scotland

525 (some say in 526, 532 or 534)

'Dennis the Short' (Dionysius Exiguous) calculates the date of the birth of Christ – concept of AD and BC dates begins

536

Beginning of a decade-long cold snap causing turmoil across the globe (some postulate a volcanic eruption plus a significant impact from space around this date)

537

Death of King Arthur (some say 542) [Note: He is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, and some think he never existed as a real person]

c541

Bubonic plague devastates Europe

c550

Anglian settlement in south-east, Scotland

563

Columba arrives in Iona and founds the Celtic Christian Church (c565)

570

Birth of Mohammed (Muhammad)

577

Anglo-Saxon victory at Deorham marks resumption of their advance in England

597

Death of Columba, later sanctified

597/8

St Augustine lands in Kent – converts King Ethelbert – introduces Roman Christian Church to England – later becomes first Archbishop of Canterbury

c.600 and for some centuries (some say from AD 500 to AD 850)

The period of the 'Heptarchy': the seven kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, East Anglia and Kent – the 'top king' at any one time was referred to 'Bretwalda' (overlord of the Britons)

601

Pope Gregory calls Ethelbert of Kent 'rex Anglorum'

604

St Paul's Cathedral in London founded

Death of St Augustine, and pope Gregory I

616

Feb 24: Death of Ethelbert of Kent – succeeded by his son Eadbald, who was not a Christian

617

Edwin becomes king of Northumbria (to 633) – possibly founds Edinburgh? – [He overcame all Britain save Kent alone – Anglo-Saxon Chronicles]

622

Muhammad's flight from Mecca marks the start of the Muslim calendar

642

Aug: Battle of Maserfield: Penda of Mercia defeats Oswald of Northumbria

c650

Sutton Hoo ship-burial

651

St Aidan dies

655

Nov: Battle of Winwaed (in present-day Yorkshire): Oswiu of Northumbria (brother of Oswald) defeats Penda of Mercia

664

Sep: Synod of Whitby: Divisions within the Northumbrian church led to the Synod of Whitby, where Oswiu agreed to settle the Easter controversy by adopting the Roman dating – Roman Christianity triumphs over Celtic

Plague hit England, according to Bede (writing c.730): "A sudden pestilence raging far and wide with fierce destruction.'

673

Birth of the Venerable Bede, first English historian (d. 735)

First synod of clergy in England (at Hertford) – Roman and Celtic churches came to an agreement on the date to celebrate Easter

685–7

Cuthbert served as Bishop of Lindisfarne

c698

Lindisfarne Gospels

710

Roman Christianity established in Pictland

722

First written version of Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf

731

Bede's Ecclesiastical History

757

Offa became ruler of Mercia (died Jul 796) and effectively ruled much of Britain south of the Humber during the latter part of his reign

c785

King Offa first divided a pound of silver into 240 silver pennies

789

First sighting of Viking ships off Dorset

793

First Viking raids (Lindisfarne and elsewhere)

800

Charlemagne crowned Emperor of the West by Pope Leo III

c800

Book of Kells

802

Norsemen plunder Iona

827

Egbert King of Wessex and Mercia effectively first king of England (d. 839), but see 937 – see also general list of dates for Monarchs of England

838

Norse establish permanent base at Dublin

844

Kenneth I MacAlpin, king of Scots, becomes King of Picts – start of Scottish kingdom

865–874

Danish army conquers north-eastern third of England

871

Jan 4: Battle of Reading – Ethelred of Wessex defeated by a Danish invasion army

Apr: Alfred (the Great) succeeds Ethelred; crowned king of Wessex

872

Curfew (couvre feu) introduced at Oxford by King Alfred to reduce fire risks (why a French term this early in English history?)

878

Battle of Chippenham: Alfred defeated by Danes (shortly after Christmas 877) but escapes and 'burns the cakes'; Battle of Egbert's Stone (Eddington?) in May: Alfred (5–6,000 troops) defeats Danes, who retreat and are besieged in Chippenham – Danes/Vikings fail in attempt to conquer Wessex – leader Guthram baptised as Athelstan and accepted by Alfred as his Godson

880

Treaty of Wedmore: England divided between Alfred the Great of Wessex (the south and west) and the 'Danelaw' under Guthram (the north and east)

Start of concept of 'Englishness' and growth of 'burghs' in England from this time

889

Donald II, first King of Picts & Scots (d. in battle 900)

891

Beginning of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle marks revival of learning in England

899

Oct 26: Death of King Alfred the Great (some say 901); succeeded by Edward (the Elder)

917–921

Edward of Wessex conquers southern half of Danelaw – with the help of his sister, Aethelflaed of Mercia

937

Athelstan of Wessex defeats Scots, north Welsh and Norse at Brunanburgh – regarded by some as 'first king of all England' (but see 827)

939

Oct 27: Edmund I succeeds Athelstan as King of England

c960

Edinburgh held by King of Alba

971

Jul 15: St Swithun's body moved from his outdoor grave to an indoor shrine in the the Old Minster in Winchester against his expressed wishes – legend says this was accompanied by bad weather, from which the popular British weather lore proverb comes, that if it rains on Saint Swithun's day, 15 July, it will rain for 40 days and 40 nights

973

Edgar introduces a new coinage – the royal portrait becomes a regular feature on coins

980

Vikings renew assault on England

987

Hugh Capet crowned King of France, first of the Capetian dynasty which ruled till the French Revolution

991

Aug 10: Battle of Maldon – English, led by Bryhtnoth, defeated by a band of raiding Vikings near Maldon, Essex – celebrated by a poem

1002

Nov 13: St Brice's Day massacre – King Aethelred (Ethelred II, the 'Unready') orders killing of all Danes in England

1003

Sveyn I (Sweyn, Swein) of Denmark devastates England: Ethelred pays him 24,000 pounds of silver to stop

1004

Vikings explore the North American coast

1006

Apr 30: The brightest supernova in recorded history appears in the constellation Lupus

1007

King Ethelred pays Sveyn another 36,000 pounds of silver

1010

London Bridge torn down by Vikings with grappling irons – (Olaf II Haraldsson, later St Olaf, took part) – possibly the origin of "London Bridge is falling Down"

1012

Apr 19: Murder by Danes of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, in Greenwich after refusing to be ransomed (canonised 1078 to St Alphege)

King Aethelred pays Sveyn another 48,000 pounds of silver; but next year Sveyn pushes him off the throne

1014

Brian Boru leads the Irish to victory over the Norse at Clontarf

1016

Canute (Knut, son of Sveyn) becomes king of Denmark, Norway and England (d. 1035)

1017

Canute divides England into four Earldoms: Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia

1018

Battle of Carham: Malcolm defeats the Northumbrians adding Lothian to Scotland

c1030

Guido of Arezzo introduces first practical form of musical notation, enabling melodies to be sung on sight

1034

Strathclyde annexed by King of Scots becomes part of Scottish Kingdom

1035

Death of Canute: the Danish empire splits up

1040

Aug 15: Macbeth (Mac Bethad mac Findláich) murders Duncan (Donnchad Mac Crínáin) and takes the throne of Scotland (d. 1057)

Lady Godiva, wife of earl of Mercia, rides naked through Coventry as a protest against taxes – [Now why couldn't Shakespeare have written about that instead?]

1042

Edward the Confessor King of England (d. 1066)

First recorded use of moveable type, in China

1045–1050

Building of Westminster Abbey – consecrated 28 Dec 1065, only a week before Edward the Confessor's death and subsequent funeral (rebuilt 1245–1517)

1054

Jul: Supernova observed by Arabian and Chinese astronomers – becomes the Crab Nebula

The Great Schism, when Christianity divided into Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) branches

1066

Jan 6: Edward the Confessor dies – Harold II (Godwinson) reigned for 9 months

Sep 25: Battle of Stamford Bridge: Harold II defeats Norwegian invasion

Sep 28: Invasion of England by Duke William of Normandy

Oct 14: Battle of Hastings – Harold II dies

Dec 25: William crowned King of England at Westminster

1069

Northern earls and a Scandanavian army seize York – William replies with the 'Harrowing of the North' – "He made no effort to control his fury and he punished the innocent with the guilty. He ordered that crops and herds, tools and food should be burned to ashes. More than 100,000 people perished of hunger" [Orderic Vitalis]

King Malcolm Canmore of Scotland marries Margaret (later St Margaret)

1072

King Malcolm III of Scotland submitted to William the Conqueror

c1070

Reconstruction of Canterbury Cathedral begins: The Saxon cathedral burned in 1067. Lanfranc, first Norman Archbishop, restored and enlarged its buildings between 1067 and 1077. A new choir was consecrated in 1130 but burned in 1174, four years after Becket's murder. That was rebuilt by 1184, but the nave wasn't finished until 1405. [others say completed 1495]

1071

Norman conquest of England complete

1077

Possible completion of the Bayeux Tapestry

1079

Construction of Winchester Cathedral begins (consecrated in 1093 but not completed until 1404.)

1081

Building of Tower of London starts [others say 1067]

1086

Completion of Domesday Book

1092

May 9: Lincoln Cathedral consecrated

1095

Nov 27: Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont

1096

First crusade begins (to 1099)

1098

Jun 3: Antioch falls to the Crusaders

Expedition of Magnus Barelegs to Scottish coasts

1099

Jun 7: Siege of Jerusalem begins by the Crusaders

12th & 13th centuries

Climate: A medieval warm period called the 'Little Optimum'

1100

Aug 2: William II found dead in the New Forest with an arrow through his lung

Aug 5: Henry I crowned in Westminster Abbey

c1100

First record of football in England

1102

Synod of Westminster under Anselm forbids clergy to marry

1106

Sep 28: Battle of Tinchebray – Henry I defeats his older brother Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy – England and Normandy remain under a single ruler until 1204

1110

Introduction in England of Pipe Rolls, recording exchequer payments

1119

Military order of the Knights Templar founded

1120

Nov 25: The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, the only legitimate son of Henry I of England – his death caused a succession crisis, culminating in 'The Anarchy' or 'The Nineteen Year Winter' during the reign of Stephen (1135–1154)

1120s

First references in Scotland to Burghs and Sheriffs

1124

Apr 27: David I becomes King of Scotland

c1130

Great age of abbey building in England: Tintern (1131), Rievaulx (1131), Fountains (1132)

1135

Dec 1: Death of Henry I; Stephen seizes the throne of England amid a confusion of Matildas

1138

Aug 22: 'Battle of The Standard' near Northallerton – English forces repelled a Scottish army

1139

Portugal becomes independent from Spain

c1140

Transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture in Europe (freeing walls from load-bearing functions, thus allowing larger windows); Linguistically, also regarded as the start of the Middle English period (until c.1500)

1141

Only year in which Matilda (or Maude, daughter of Henry I) was the undisputed ruler of England

1143

Jul 1: Battle of Wilton in Wiltshire

1144

Normandy comes under Angevin control under Geoffrey of Anjou

1145

Pope Eugene III calls for the Second Crusade (1147–49)

1148

Jul: Seige of Damascus by the Crusaders fails

1150

First recorded Mersey Ferry

1151

Sep 7: Geoffrey of Anjou dies, succeeded by his son Henry Plantagenet, aged 18

1152

May 18: Henry Plantagenet (to become King Henry II) marries Eleanor of Aquitaine

1153

May 27: Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland

Treaty of Wallingford between Stephen and Matilda in which her son Henry Plantagenet would inherit the throne of England on Stephen's death

1154

Oct 25: Death of King Stephen; Henry II becomes King of England – he already has Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, and is now the most powerful man in Europe

Dec 4: Nicholas Breakspear (Adrian IV) becomes only English pope (b. circa 1100 at St Albans, d. 1 Sep 1159 at Anagni and buried in the Vatican)

Dec 19: Henry II crowned in Westminster Abbey

1155

Papal bull issued by Adrian IV, the only Englishman to serve as Pope, gives the King of England lordship over Ireland

1157

Jul: Henry II of England invades Wales and is defeated at the Battle of Ewloe by Owain Gwynedd

1158

A new coinage introduced by Henry II (known as the Tealby penny) was struck from 92.5% silver (Sterling)

1159

Sep 7: Cardinals given the right to elect the Pope (prior to this the pope was elected by the clergy and congregation of the church) – Pope Alexander III succeeds Pope Adrian IV as the 170th pope

1162

Jun 3: Thomas Becket consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury – Henry II thought he would be 'his' man, but things turned out differently (see 1174)

1163

Danegeld tax abolished

1165

Letter of Prester John started spreading throughout Europe

1166

Establishment of trial by jury

1170

Dec 29: Murder of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral

1172

Pope decrees that Henry II of England is feudal lord of Ireland

1173

Apr: Revolt begins against Henry II by his wife and sons

1174

Jul 12: Henry II did penance for the death of Thomas à Becket, murdered by his knights 3 years previously and already canonised; the following day in a 'seeming act of divine providence', the last supporters of the revolt against him were surprised and captured at Alnwick

1175

Treaty of Falaise signed – William the Lion surrenders Scottish crown to King Henry II of England

1176

London Bridge construction in stone started (from tax on wool) – completed 1209, replaced 1831

Dec 25: First Eisteddfod, at Cardigan Castle

1178

The Leaning Tower of Pisa begins to lean as the third level is completed

1187

Oct: Saladin recaptures Jerusalem – served as the catalyst for the Third Crusade (1187–1192)

1188

The original Newgate Prison built in London

'Saladin Tithe' levied in England – exemption for those who joined the Crusade

1189

Jul 6: Henry II dies at the castle of Chinon in Anjou; Richard I 'Lionheart' becomes king of England (d. 1199) – acknowledges the independence of Scotland

Sep 1: Legal Memory dates from accession of Richard I – before that is 'Time Immemorial', see 1275

1190

Mar: Jews of York massacred (150 in number)

Opening of the Third Crusade

'Early English' Gothic period in English architecture (till about 1280)

1192

Dec 20: Richard I held for ransom on his way back from the Crusade by Leopold V of Austria

1199

Apr 6: Richard I dies having spent most of his reign abroad – succeeded by his brother John (to 1216)

1200

King John marries Isabella of Angouleme in Bordeaux Cathedral

1202

Pope Innocent III initiates the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204)

1204

Angers and Normandy are captured by Philip II of France

1207

Jul 15: King John expels Canterbury monks for supporting Archbishop Stephen Langton

1208

Winchester Pipe Rolls begin – the financial accounts of the manors or estates belonging to the Bishopric of Winchester – written in medieval Latin until 1599, after that in English – see example of translated contents

1212

Jul: One of the early 'great fires of London' – Chronicles of the Mayors & Sheriffs of London: "In this year was the Great Fire of Suthwerk; and it burned the Church of Saint Mary, as also the Bridge, with the Chapel there, and the greatest part of the City" ['Altogether it claimed 12,000 lives' Bill Bryson At Home]

1215

Jun 15: Magna Carta sealed at Runnymede by King John

Oct 28: First Lord Mayor's Show in London

Nov 11: Fourth Lateran Council defined the doctrine of transubstantiation

1217

Nov 6: 'Charter of the Forest' by Henry III established that all freemen owning land within the forest enjoyed the rights of agistment (grazing cattle) and pannage (grazing pigs)

Fifth Crusade (1217–1221)

1220

Start of building current York Minster: Archbishop Walter de Gray started its construction (with the transept) in 1220, working from the design of the Norman cathedral of 1070. Its towers were finally completed in 1472.

Salisbury Cathedral: started (replacing the Norman cathedral at Old Sarum) by Bishop Poore in 1220, consecrated in 1258, and its great spire finished in 1334

1222

Introduction of a poll tax in England

King Alexander II of Scotland conquers Argyll

1228

First recorded mention of the Royal Mint

Sixth Crusade (1228–1229)

1231

Cambridge University organised and granted Royal Charter

1235

Statute of Merton – considered to be the first English statute – authorised manorial lords to enclose portions of commons and wastes provided that sufficient pasture remained for his tenants

1237

Treaty of York signed by Henry III of England and Alexander II of Scotland – set the border between England and Scotland, which remains to this day except round Berwick

1247

Foundation of Bedlam (Bethlehem Hospital), London, by Simon Fitzmary

1248

Charter granted to Oxford University by Henry III

Aug 15: Foundation stone of Cologne cathedral laid – building not completed until 1880

Seventh Crusade (1248–1254)

c1250

Royal Proclamations by Henry III are first government documents issued in English

1256

Decreed in England that in leap years, the leap day and the day before are to be reckoned as one day for the purpose of calculating when a full year has passed

1258

'A strange time for weather globally' – incessant rains, terrible floods, severe cold and disasterous harvests that led to famine – now attributed to the eruption in the previous year of the volvano Samalas in what is now Indonesia.

1259

Dec 4: Treaty of Paris between Henry III and Louis IX of France – Henry agreed to renounce control of Normandy (except for the Channel Islands), Maine, Anjou and Poitou, which had been lost under the reign of King John. He was able to keep Gascony and parts of Aquitaine but only as a vassal to Louis. In exchange, Louis withdrew his support for English rebels. Said to be one of the indirect causes of the Hundred Years War

1260

Chartres cathedral dedicated

1263

Oct 2: Battle of Largs, Ayrshire – King Alexander III said to have defeated Norwegian invaders under King Haakon IV

1264

First recorded reference to Justice of the Peace in England (but see 1285)

May 12-14: Battle of Lewes: Henry III captured by Simon de Montfort

1265

Jan 20: First elected English parliament (De Montfort's Parliament) conducts its first meeting, in the Palace of Westminster

Aug 4: Battle of Evesham: Simon de Montfort killed (death of chivalry? – but this also claimed for Crécy, see 1346)

1266

Western Isles acquired by Scotland

1270

Eighth Crusade (1270)

1271

Ninth (and last) crusade (1271–72)

1272

Nov 20: Edward I (who was away on the Crusade) declared king of England following the death of his father Henry III on Nov 16

1274

Aug 19: Edward I crowned on his return from the Crusades

1275

Apr 22: First Statute of Westminster passed by the English parliament – fixed the reign of Richard I as the time limit for bringing certain types of action – see 'Time Immemorial' 1189 (others say there was also the concept of 'before the memory of man' being 113 years)

Scottish rule established on the Isle of Man

1277

Edward I embarks on the conquest of Wales

1279

A major re-coinage introduced new denominations. In addition to the penny, the halfpenny and farthing were minted, and also a fourpenny piece called a 'groat' (from the French 'gross')

1280

'Decorated' Gothic period in English architecture (till about 1370)

Climate: 1280–1311 peak of the medieval warm period

1282

Dec 10: Llewellyn, last native Prince of Wales, killed

1283

Annexation of Wales to England by Edward I – Statute of Rhuddlan, 3 March 1284, created early counties in Wales (see 1536)

1285

Statute of Winchester and Second Statute of Westminster – first Justices of the Peace installed in England? (but some say they derive from 1361, in the reign of Edward III) – among other things, authorised manorial lords to enclose commons and wastes where the common rights belonged to tenants from other manors

1290

Oct: Death of the 'maid of Norway,' heiress to the Scottish crown – led to the Wars of Scottish Independence 1296–1328

Jul 18: Jews expelled from England by Edward I

Dec: Death of Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I – he had 12 'Eleanor crosses' erected between Lincolnshire (where she died) and London (where she was buried in Westminster Abbey)

Statute of 'Quia Emptores' – prevented tenants from leasing their lands to others and allowed the sale of freehold

Spectacles introduced in Italy

1291-2

Competition for the Scottish Crown between some eleven "Competitors" (including John Baliol, John Comyn and Robert Bruce the elder) all claiming the right to succeed

1292

Nov 17: King Edward I awards Scottish crown to John Baliol ('Toom Tabard', or 'empty coat')

1295

Oct 23: Signing of the "Auld Alliance" in Paris between Scotland and France – one of the world's oldest mutual defence treaties

1296

Annexation of Scotland by England – Scotland's Coronation Stone the "Stone of Destiny" or "Stone of Scone" was removed to Westminster Abbey by the English King Edward I, temporarily 'returned' to Scotland in 1950, and permanently returned in 1996

Mar 30: Berwick-upon-Tweed sacked by Edward I

Apr 27: Battle of Dunbar: Scots defeated

Jul 10: John Baliol dethroned by Edward I

Beginning of uprising led by William Wallace (the Guardian of Scotland)

1297

Sep 11: Battle of Stirling Bridge, defeat of English Army

1298

Jul 22: Battle of Falkirk, Edward I defeats William Wallace – early use of the long bow by the English

c1300

Earliest western reference to manufacture of gunpowder

1301

Feb 7: Son of Edward I created first Prince of Wales

1305

Trial of William Wallace in London, execution at Smithfield

1306

Mar 25: Robert the Bruce crowned King Robert I of Scots

Jun 19: Battle of Methven – a 'fortunate defeat' for Bruce

1307

Jul 7: Edward I dies – succeeded by his son, Edward II

Nov 18: According to legend, William Tell shoots an apple off of his son's head

1311

Ordinances laid on Edward II by the peerage and clergy of England to restrict his power – twenty-one signatories referred to as the Ordainers – Thomas of Lancaster their leader was executed in 1322

1312

Knights Templars suppressed in France

1313–1321

Climate: Sequence of cold and wet summers – harvests ruined

1314

Jun 24: Battle of Bannockburn – Scots under Robert the Bruce routed the English led by Edward II – resulted in Scottish independence

Edward II banned football in London (possibly to encourage people to practice their archery instead)

Great European famine – population of Britain had peaked at around 5 million before declining

c1320

Invention of escapement clocks, and first practical guns

1320

Declaration of Arbroath; a statement of Scottish independence

1326

First Scottish Parliament (at Cambuskenneth)

1327

Deposition and regicide of King Edward II of England (in an apparently unfortunate manner): Edward III rules for 50 years till 1377

1328

Jan 24: Edward III marries Philippa of Hainault

May 1: Treaty of Northampton, formalised peace between England and Scotland

1329

Jun 7: Death of Robert the Bruce; succeeded by infant David II of Scots

1332

Climatic catastrophe in eastern Asia – 7 million people drowned – black rats driven west (one theory says that this caused the Black Death in Europe – but see note 1349)

1338

Edward III asserts his claim to the French throne – 'Hundred Years War' begins (to 1453)

1340

Jun 24: Edward III personally commands the English fleet in their victory over the French off Sluys (who were trying to blockade English export of wool to Flanders)

1346

Aug 26: Battle of Crecy (Crécy) – military supremacy of the English longbow established, and that of 'peasant' archers over knights on horseback

Oct 17: Battle of Neville's Cross; English capture King David II (held until 1357)

1348

Jun 24: Order of the Garter founded by King Edward III of England – motto 'Honi soit qui mal y pense'

1349

Black Death ('The Pestilence') reaches England (entered Europe in 1346/7; lasted until 1351) – this was the first return of plague to Europe for almost 400 years, but it reappeared more than once during the next three centuries – some estimate that where it struck, up to a quarter of the population perished – theories that it was spread by rat fleas have been questioned, as it seems to have travelled too fast for that to have been the agent, and a bacterial disease possibly from Africa is now suspected – for an example of effect of the Black Death on architecture, see Winchester Cathedral

1350

Black Death first appears in Scotland

Aug 29: Battle of Winchelsea – English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships

1351

Statute of Labourers – attempt to regulate wages and prices at 1340 levels following labour shortages caused by the Black Death – it set a precedent that distinguished between labourers who were "able in body" to work and those who could not work for other reasons

1352

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge founded

1353

Giovanni Boccaccio The Decameron

1355

Feb 10: St Scholastica's Day riot, Oxford – armed clashes between locals and students (Town versus Gown)

1356

Sep 19: Battle of Poitiers: Black Prince (son of Edward III) captures the French king, John II (the Good)

1357

Oct: King David II of Scotland released by the English in return for a ransom

1360

May 8: Treaty of Brétigny marked the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) – ratified on Oct 24 at Calais – by this treaty Edward III and John II (still in captivity, though with many privileges) make peace, but it only lasted for 9 years

The French franc introduced by John II

1361

Edward, the Black Prince, marries his cousin Joan, the 'Fair Maid of Kent'

Edward III created the office of Justice of the Peace in every county in England – to meet four times a year in Quarter Sessions

Second severe outbreak of of the Black Death

1362

English becomes official language in English Parliament and Law Courts

Quarter Sessions established by statute

William Langland Vision of Piers Ploughman

1364

Charles V (the Wise) becomes King of France

1366

Statues of Kilkenny belatedly forbid intermarriage of English and Irish – Gaelic culture unsuccessfully suppressed

1369

Hundred Years War restarts

1370

'Perpendicular' Gothic period in English architecture (till about 1550) – great East Window in Gloucester first example

1371

Feb: Accession of Robert II, the first Stewart king of Scots

1372

Naval battle off La Rochelle: Castilians defeat the English fleet – tide begins to turn against the English in Aquitaine

1375

Truce in the Hundred Years War – England lost most of her possessions in France

1377

Edward III dies, age 65: Richard II rules till deposed in 1399

May 22: Pope Gregory XI issues five papal bulls to denounce the doctrines of John Wycliffe

1378

Start of the Papal Schism (until 1417) when three men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope

1381

Jun 15: Wat Tyler killed at Smithfield, London, during Peasants' Revolt in protest against poll tax of 1380

1382

First translation of the Bible into English, by John Wycliffe

Winchester College founded by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester

May 21: Great earthquake in Kent [? can't find confirmation of this one] – see 1580

1383

Regular series of wills starts in Prerogative Court of Canterbury

1386

Treaty of Windsor between Britain and Portugal – "The British have an alliance with Portugal unbroken since the year 1384, and which produced fruitful results at a critical moment in the recent war." Iron Curtain Speech by Winston Churchill, 1946

1387

Chaucer (d. 1400) begins writing The Canterbury Tales

1388

Aug 5: Battle of Otterburn, Northumberland (Chevy Chase)

1389

June 15: Battle of Kosovo; The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians

1392

Wells Cathedral clock

1397

Apr: Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II

Dick Whittington (d. 1423) first becomes Lord Mayor of London

1399

Sep: Deposition of King Richard II; Henry IV establishes Lancastrian dynasty

1400

Oct 25: Geoffrey Chaucer dies in London

Sep 16: Owen Glendower declared Prince of Wales – start of rebellion of against Henry IV

Average life expectancy had dropped to 38 years (had been 48 years in 1300)

c.1400

This is the date at which the 'great vowel shift' (shortening of vowel sounds) in the English language is regarded as starting

1403

Jul 21: Battle of Shrewsbury: Henry IV defeats rebels

1405

Jun 8: Execution of Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk for insurrection against Henry IV

1412

Foundation of the University of St Andrews

1413

Mar 21: Henry V to the throne

1415

Oct 25 (St Crispin's Day): Battle of Agincourt

1417

Jun 24: First recorded meeting of theTynwald in the Isle of Man

Jul 27: Antipope Benedict XIII deposed, bringing to an end the Great Western Schism

Aug 12: Henry V starts using English (rather than French) in his correspondence

1419

Jan 19: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England

1420

Dec 1: Henry V of England enters Paris

1422

Infant Henry VI (9 months old) on throne of England

1424

Winter: Much of Alnwick burnt by a Scottish raiding party (and again in later years)

1429

Feb 12: Battle of the Herrings just north of Orleans

1431

May 30: Death of Joan of Arc

Dec 16: Henry VI of England crowned King of France at Notre Dame in Paris

1432–1438

Climate: Britain snowbound for 6 of these 7 winters

1432

University of Caen founded by John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford

1435

Sep 21: Treaty of Arras between Charles VII of France and Philip III of Burgundy ends the English-Burgundy alliance

1437

Assassination of King James I of Scots at Perth

1440

Eton College founded by Henry VI

1450

May 8: Jack Cade's Rebellion: Kentishmen revolt against Henry VI

1451

University of Glasgow founded

1453

End of Hundred Years' War (Battle of Castillon, Jul 17)

1455

Feb 23: Johannes Gutenberg starts printing the bible, using movable type [some say 1450, 1453 or 1454]

May 22: Battle of St Albans, first in Wars of the Roses (1455–87); Richard, Duke of York, defeats and captures Henry VI

Fall of the Black Douglases in Scotland

1456

Aug 24: Printing of Gutenberg Bible completed [some say 1454 or 1455]

1457

First recorded mention of golf in Scotland

1460

Aug 3: King James II of Scots killed by an exploding cannon at Kelso

1461

Mar 29 (Palm Sunday): Battle of Towton – probably the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil: Henry VI flees to Scotland; Edward, Duke of York, crowned as Edward IV on 1st Aug – see website

1465

Irish living near English settlements made to take English surnames

1468/69

Orkney and Shetland Islands acquired from Norway by Scotland (but Wikepedia says 20th Feb 1472)

1470

Oct 30: Henry VI (Lancastrian) restored to the throne

1471

Apr 14: Yorkists defeat the Lancastrians at Barnet; Edward IV resumes the throne

May 4: Battle of Tewkesbury – Edward IV defeats a Lancastrian Army and kills Edward, Prince of Wales

May 21: Henry VI murdered in the Tower of London

1472

St Andrews made a bishopric

1475

Aug 29: Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between France and England

1476

Caxton sets up a printing press in Westminster

1477

Edward IV bans cricket

1478

Feb 18: George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence executed in the Tower of London, by drowning in a butt of Malmsey wine?

1480

Spanish Inquisition begins (did nobody really expect it?)

1483

Murder of the princes (Edward V and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury) in the Tower; their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester becomes king (Richard III)

1484

Introduction of bail for defendants in legal courts

English first used for parliamentary statutes

1485

Aug 22: Battle of Bosworth Field; Richard III killed (see 2012) – end of the War of the Roses and beginning of the Tudor dynasty (Henry VII)

Formation of the Yeomen of the Guard

1486

Jan 18: Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and sister of Edward V

Boke of St Albans printed – includes collective nouns for animals and people

1487

May 24: Imposter Lambert Simnel crowned as "King Edward VI" at Dublin

Jun 16: Battle of Stoke Field – Henry VII's final victory in War of the Roses

1489

A pound coin (the 'sovereign') minted for the first time. A shilling coin was minted for the first time a few years later

1492

Nov 9: Peace of Etaples between Henry VII and Charles VIII of France – improvement in relations continued until the end of Henry's reign

Dec 5: Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (West Indies)

Papermaking introduced to Britain – John Tate opens a paper mill at Stevenage soon after this

Moors driven from Grenada

1494

June 7: Treaty of Tordesillas – Spain and Portugal divide the world between them (along the great diameter 51°W and 129°E longditude) – see 1529

1495

Foundation of the University of Aberdeen (as King's College)

1497

Jun 17: Battle of Deptford Bridge – end of the Cornish rebellion against Henry VII

Jul 8: Vasco da Gama sets sail on first direct European voyage to India.

Parish registers instituted in Spain by Cardinal Ximenes

Cabot reaches North America

1499

Nov 16: Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the throne, executed

1503

May 28: Marriage of King James IV of Scots and Margaret Tudor

1503-5

Leonardo da Vinci paints Mona Lisa

1505-6

Royal College of Surgeons founded in Edinburgh

1506

Jan 22: First contingent of 150 Swiss Guards arrives at the Vatican

1507

First printing press in Scotland set up in Edinburgh by Andrew Myllar

Apr: Suggestion put forward that the New World be named America in honour of Amerigo Vespucci (on Martin Waldseemüller's world map)

1509

Naturalisation papers start in England

Apr 22: Henry VIII becomes king of England (to 1547) at 17 years old

Jun 11: Henry VIII marries Catherine of Aragon

1512

Admiralty founded in London

The "Auld Alliance" treaty with France – all Scottish citizens became French and vice versa

Nov 1: Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, exhibited to the public for the first time

1513

Aug 16: Battle of the Spurs – English troops under Henry VIII defeat a French force at Guinegate

Sep 9: Battle of Flodden, defeat of Scottish Army – death of King James IV of Scots

Machiavelli writes The Prince

1514

Recording of Testaments (wills) begins in Scotland

1515

Nov 15: Thomas Wolsley invested as Cardinal

1516

Thomas More writes Utopia

1517

Oct 31: Martin Luther fixes his 95 theses on church door at Wittenburg – regarded as start of the Reformation

1518

Treaty of London, a non-aggression pact between the major European nations: France, England, Holy Roman Empire, the Papacy, Spain, Burgundy and the Netherlands – sponsored by Cardinal Wolsey

1520

Cortes conquers Mexico

Nov: Three ships under the command of Ferdinand Magellan negotiate the Strait of Magellan, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific

1521

Apr 17: Martin Luther speaks to the assembly at the Diet of Worms, refusing to recant his teachings

May 17: Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, executed for treason

May 25: Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw

1522

Sep 6: The Victoria, one of the surviving ships of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, becomes the first ship known to circumnavigate the world

1525

New Testament translated into English by William Tyndale

1527

Bishop Vesey's Grammar School founded in Sutton Coldfield

1528

St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle completed

1529

Apr 22: Treaty of Zaragoza specified the anti-meridian of the Treaty of Tordesillas (see 1494) which stated that everything west of 46° 37' was given to Spain whereas everything east of 46° 37' was given to Portugal

Diet of Speyer: origin of the word Protestant

1531

Feb 11: Henry VIII recognised as Supreme Head of the Church of England

1532

Foundation of the Court of Session in Scotland

1533

Jan 25: Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn secretly, wife #2 (she was crowned as Queen on 1st June)

Mar 30: Thomas Cranmer becomes Archbishop of Canterbury

May 23: Henry VIII's marriage with Catherine of Aragon officially declared annulled

Jul 11: Henry VIII excommunicated by Pope Clement VII

Sep 17: Anne Boleyn gives birth to a daughter Elizabeth, to become Queen Elizabeth I

1534

Reformation of the Catholic Church in England church (Henry VIII)

1535

Sir Thomas More executed

1536

Dissolution of monasteries starts in England (to 1540)

Wales and England legally united by the Laws in Wales Act of 1535 – further Welsh counties established (see 1284)

May 19: Anne Boleyn executed

May 30: Henry VIII marries Jane Seymour, wife #3 (she was crowned as Queen on 29th October)

Jul 18: The authority of the Pope is declared void in England

1537

Oct 24: Jane Seymour dies from complications in giving birth to a son, the future Edward VI

1538

English and Welsh parish registers start

Henry VIII issues English Bible

Dec 17: Henry VIII excommunicated by Pope Paul III

1540

Statute of Wills allows freehold land to be bequeathed

Jan 6: Henry VIII marries Anne of Cleves, the 'Flanders Mare', wife #4

Feb 9: First recorded horse racing event in Britain, at Chester

Jul 9: Henry VIII divorces Anne of Cleves

Jul 28: Thomas Cromwell executed; Henry VIII marries Catherine Howard the same day, wife #5

1541

Henry VIII proclaimed king (rather than feudal lord) of Ireland

1542

Feb 13: Catherine Howard executed

Nov 24: The Rout of Solway Moss

Dec 14: Death of King James V of Scots; his baby daughter Mary "Queen of Scots" succeeds him, just 6 days old

1543

Jul 12: Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr, wife #6, who survives him

Sep 9: Mary Stuart, at nine months old, is officially crowned "Queen of Scots" in Stirling (spelling of the royal house changes from Stewart to Stuart)

1544-5

Mary of Guise, Regent of Scotland

Henry's VIII's "Rough Wooing" of the Scottish Borders

1545

Jul 20: Mary Rose, flagship of Henry VIII, sinks in the Solent – raised in 1982

Dec 13: Start of the Council of Trent (Trento, Italy) – convened by the Catholic Church three times, ending 4 Dec 1563, as a response to the Protestant Reformation

1546

Trinity College, Cambridge founded by Henry VIII

1547

Jan 16: Ivan the Terrible crowned Tsar of Russia at age 16
Jan 28: Death of Henry VIII (succeeded by Edward VI, aged 9, to 1553)

Feb 20: Coronation of Edward VI in Westminster Abbey

English replaced Latin in church services in England and Wales

Sep 10: Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, said to be the first 'modern' battle to be fought in the British Isles

The injunction to keep parish registers is reiterated

Vagrants Act passed (able-bodied tramps can be detained as slaves)

1548

Priests in England allowed to marry (about a third then did so) – but see 1554

1549

Jun 9: First Book of Common Prayer sanctioned by English Parliament

Wedding ring finger changed from right to left hand

First Act of Uniformity in England made Catholic Mass illegal

English Parliament declares enclosures legal

1550–1700

Climate: Referred to as the 'Little Ice Age' – severe gales became more frequent

1550

Walloon Protestants arrive as refugees from the Low Countries

1551

Scotland: General Provincial Council orders each parish to keep a register of baptisms and banns of marriage

1552

Mar: An 'Act of Uniformity' imposes the Protestant prayerbook of 1552 in England

1553

Jul 6: Edward VI dies; Lady Jane Grey queen for a few days only

Jul 19: Mary Tudor ('Bloody Mary') comes to the throne

1554-1558

Brief Catholic restoration under Queen Mary Tudor – married priests forced to separate at least 30 miles from their wives

1554

Feb 12: Lady Jane Grey beheaded

1555

Michel Nostradamus publishes his prophecies

1556

Mar 21: Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer burned at the stake in Oxford

1557

Dec: The First Covenant signed in Scotland (foundation of the Presbyterian Church)

Index librorum prohibitum (index of prohibited books) instituted by the Vatican – repealed in 1966

1558

Scottish parish registers start

Chancery Proceedings Indexes begin

Jan 7: French take Calais, last English possession in France

Apr 24: Marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to François the Dauphin of France in Paris

Nov 17: Queen Mary Tudor of England dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth – Protestantism restored in England

1558-1603

Policy of Plantation begins

System of Counties adopted

1559

Jan 15: Elizabeth crowned in Westminster Abbey by Owen Oglethorpe, the Bishop of Carlisle

Apr 29: Acts of Supremacy passed in Parliament, ending papal jurisdiction over England & Wales; established Church of England

John Knox returns from Continent – strengthens case for Presbyterianism in Scotland

Tobacco introduced to Europe

1560

Feb 27: Treaty of Berwick between Duc du Chatelherault (as governor of Scotland) and the English, agreeing to act jointly to expel the French from Scotland

Establishment of Protestantism in Scotland – commissary courts thrown into confusion – some records lost

1561

Spire of St Paul's, highest in England, destroyed by fire

The first coins produced by machinery (known as a 'mill') rather than by hand, but it was a slow process and did not replace hand struck coinage until new machinery was introduced in 1663

1562

Mar 1: Over 1,000 Huguenots massacred in Wassy-sur-Blaise – start of the First War of Religion in France (and see 1572)

Earliest English slave-trading expedition, under John Hawkins – between Guinea and the West Indies

1563

Jul 28: The English surrender Le Havre to the French after a siege

Papal recusants heavily fined for non-attendance at Church

The Test Act excludes Roman Catholics from governmental office

1564

Apr 26: Shakespeare baptised – he is said to have been born on Apr 23, St George's Day; he certainly died on Apr 23, 1616

1565

Jul 29: Marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, her first cousin

1566

Mar 9: Murder of David Riccio (or Rizzio) in Holyrood House

1567

Feb 10: Murder of Darnley outside Holyrood House in an explosion

May 15: Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell

Jul 24: Mary Queen of Scots deposed and replaced by her 1 year old son James VI

Earliest date in the French Protestant and Walloon registers

1568

May 13: Battle of Langside – Mary's flight to England and her imprisonment by Queen Elizabeth I

1569

Elizabeth I approved Sunday sports

Gerardus Mercator produced his world map (Mercator Projection) to aid sailors in their navigation

1570

Feb 25: Pope Pius V issued the papal bull 'Regnans in Excelsis' to excommunicate Elizabeth I and her followers in the Church of England

1571

Beginning of penal legislation against Catholics in England

Jan 23: Opening of the Royal Exchange in London, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham – this building destroyed in Great Fire of London 1666

Repeal of Act prohibiting lending of money on interest – gradual change from 'subsistence economy' to 'cash economy' resulted

1571-1572

Presbyterianism introduced into England by Thomas Cartwright

1572

Aug: Slaughter of Huguenots in Paris (massacre of St Bartholomew, started 24 Aug)

Nov: Tycho's Supernova observed in the constellation Cassiopeia, one of about eight supernovae visible to the naked eye in historical records.

1574

Colonial State Papers published – continued to 1738

1577

James Burbage opens first theatre in London

1579

Act of Uniformity in matters of religion enforced

1580

Apr 6: The 'Easter earthquake' or Dover Straits earthquake, largest in the recorded history of England, mentioned by Shakespeare [Nurse: "’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years…” (Romeo and Juliet, I.iii, line 22)] – dozens of ships sunk and a tsunami hit Calais; several London churches also damaged

Colonisation of Ireland

Congregational movement founded by Robert Browne about this time

1581

Jan 16: English Parliament outlaws Roman Catholicism

Apr 4: Francis Drake knighted by Elizabeth I aboard the Golden Hind after circumnavigating the world (see 1967)

English Levant Company founded

1582

Gregorian calendar introduced to replace Julian calendar in some countries: Spain and Portugal, France, Low Countries, part of Italy, Denmark. Pope Gregory suppressed 10 days by altering 5 Oct to 15 Oct, thus making the Spring equinox fall on 21 March 1583. Dates relating to the Julian calendar were then referred to as 'Old Style', and those relating to the Gregorian calendar as 'New Style'. See 1600 and 1751 for its adoption in Britain.

Nov 28: In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage licence

1583

Aug: Sir Humphrey Gilbert attempts to establish English authority at St John's, Newfoundland

Foundation of Cambridge University Press by Thomas Thomas

University of Edinburgh founded

1584

Jun 4: Sir Walter Raleigh establishes first English colony in the New World, on Roanoke Island, Virginia (now in North Carolina) – the so-called 'Lost Colony' [but see 1583].

1585

Foundation of Oxford University Press

Shakespeare started seriously to write about this time

1586

Camden Britannia, first topographical survey of England

1587

Feb 8: Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Fotheringay Castle, near Peterborough

Apr 19: Sir Francis Drake sinks the Spanish fleet in Cadiz harbour

Aug 11: Raleigh's second expedition to New World lands in North Carolina – first child born in the New World of English parents was Virginia Dare (Aug 18)

Introduction of potatoes to England

1588

Jul 19: Spanish Armada sighted off the Lizard (had set sail from Lisbon in late May)

Jul 29: Defeat of Spanish Armada off Gravelines

Invention of shorthand by Dr Timothy Bright

1591

Trinity College, Dublin, founded

1592

A Congregational (or Independent) Church formed in London

Scotland: Presbyterian Church formally established – all ministers equal – no bishops – secular commissaries appointed by the Crown

1593

British statute mile established by law

1594–1603

Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, leads Irish rebellion against English rule

1597

Poor Law Act for erection of parish workhouses for the Poor – Poor Rate collection allowed

1598

Bishop's transcripts of English and Welsh parish registers start – parish records were to be kept in 'great decent books of parchment' and copies or 'Bishop's Transcripts' of new entries were to be sent each month to the diocesan centre

Edict of Nantes gives Huguenots toleration in France (but see 1685)

1600

The early 1600s often known as the period of the 'Rebuilding of England'

Memoirs of Officers of the Royal Navy begin

Jan 1: Scotland adopts New Year beginning 1st January (previously 25th March) - see 1752

Dec 31: British East India Company founded

1601

Great English Poor Law Act passed

First use of fruit juice as a preventative for scurvy by James Lancaster

1602

Mar 20: Dutch East India Company founded

Nov 8: Bodleian Library at Oxford University opened to the public

1603

Mar 24: Death of Elizabeth I: union of Scottish and English crowns – under King James VI of Scots and I of England (d. 1625)

Jul 25: Coronation – James VI of Scotland is crowned first king of Great Britain

1604

Robert Cawdrey A Table Alphabeticall – first English dictionary

Nov 1: Shakespeare: Othello first presented

James I repealed all of England's sumptuary restrictions

1605

Nov 5: Gunpowder plot at Westminster (Guy Fawkes, etc)

1606

Jan 31: Guy Fawkes and co-conspirators executed

Apr 12: Adoption of Union Flag as the flag of "Great Britain" (the term Union Jack is used officially only when the Union Flag is flown from the Jack Mast of a Royal Naval vessel)

The London Company chartered to colonise Virginia: the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery leave England on 19th De

c taking 144 days to reach America

Episcopacy established in Scotland (against wishes of the Scots)

1607

May 14: Jamestown, Virginia settled – to become the first permanent British colony in North America

Sep: Flight of the Earls from Ireland – leading Ulster families go into exile

1608

First use of telescope by Galileo – he observed the moons of Jupiter two years later in Jan 1610

1610

James VI & I established the Episcopal Church in Scotland – Prebyterians persecuted and many of their records lost

1611

Plantation of Ulster with English and Scottish colonists

Authorised (King James) Version of Bible in Britain

May 22: James VI & I created the title of baronet

Nov 1: Shakespeare: The Tempest first presented

1613

Jun 29: The Globe Theatre in London burns during a performance of Henry the Eighth (finally pulled down in 1644)

A copper farthing was produced, as a silver coin would be too small

1616

Saturday Apr 23 (Gregorian calendar): Death of Miguel de Cervantes (of Don Quixote fame) in Madrid

Tuesday Apr 23 (Julian calendar): Death of Shakespeare

Ben Jonson becomes first Poet Laureate

1617

Register of Sasines (land leases) established in Scotland – record of the transfer of land and property

1618

Sir Walter Raleigh beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I

1619

Dec 4 (Nov 24 old style): Colonists from Berkeley Parish in England disembark in Virginia and give thanks to God (considered by many to be the first Thanksgiving in the Americas)

1620

Dec 21 (Dec 16 old style): The Mayflower reaches America – founds Plymouth, New England (had initially set sail from Southampton on Aug 5)

Manufacture of coke (the fuel, not the drink!) patented by Dud Dudley

1621

Chimneys to be made of brick and to be four and a half feet above the roof

Shakespeare's First Folio published

1622

First English newspaper appeared Weekly News

1624

Monopoly Act in England: patents protected

Edmund Gunter introduces the surveyor's chain (measurement of length)

1625

The size of bricks standardised in England around this time

Mar 27: Death of King James VI & I

1625-1649

Carolean Age

1628

Mar 1: Writs issued by Charles I that every county in England (not just seaport towns) pay ship tax by this date

1629

Mar 10: Parliament dissolved by King Charles I – did not meet for another 11 years

1630-1750

Baroque Period (Art & Antiques)

1630-1750

Renaissance Period (Art & Antiques)

1633

Jun: Galileo summoned by Inquisition for publishing in favour of Copernican theory

1635

Letter Office of England & Scotland started

Flintlock small arms invented around this time (replaces matchlock)

L'Academie Française founded in France by Richelieu

1636

Hackney Carriages in use by now in London

1637

Scottish Prayer Book published

'Tulipomania' in Holland, leads to classic market collapse

1638

Charles regarded protests against the prayerbook as treason – forced Scots to choose between their church and the King – a "Covenant", swearing to resist these changes to the death, was signed in Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh and was accepted by hundreds of thousands of Scots (revival of Presbyterian Church)

1639

Act of Toleration in England established religious toleration

Dec 4 (Nov 24 old style): Jeremiah Horrocks makes the first observation of a transit of Venus

1640

Nov 3: Charles I forced to recall Parliament (the 'Long Parliament') due to Scottish invasion

1641

Charles I's policies cause insurrection in Ulster and Civil War in England

Oct 23: 50,000 Irish killed in an uprising in Ulster

Charles I and the English Parliament acknowledge the Prebyterian Church in Scotland

1642

The Civil War interrupted the keeping of parish registers

English theatres closed by Puritans (till 1660)

Aug 22: Charles I raises his standard at Nottingham – First Civil War in England (to 1649) – first engagement at Edgehill (23 Oct) – Scottish Covenanters side with the English rebels who take power – the Earl of Montrose sided with King Charles, strife spilled into Scotland

Nov 13: Battle of Turnham Green – Royalist forces withdraw in face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to take London

Nov 24: Abel Janszoon Tasman discovers Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania)

Dec 18: Abel Janszoon Tasman first European to set foot in New Zealand

1643

Dec 13: Battle of Alton – victory for Parliamentarians – Sir Richard Bolle killed in St Lawrence's church

Solemn League and Covenant signed in Scotland

1644

Jun 29: Battle of Cropredy Bridge – Royalists beat the Parliamentarian forces

Jul 2: Battle of Marston Moor, near York – Parliamentarian forces beat the Royalists

Earliest Independent (Congregational) registers

Earliest Presbyterian registers

1644-5

Montrose's Venture (Montrose executed in 1650)

1645

Jun 14: Battle of Naseby: Parliament's New Model Army crushes the Royalist forces

Battle of Philiphaugh in Scotland

Inquisitions Post Mortem end

Scotland: Each county and burgh ordered to raise and maintain a number of foot soldiers, according to population, to serve as militia – population of Scotland estimated at 420,000

Plague made its last appearance in Scotland

1646

May 5: Charles I surrenders to the Scottish Army at Newark

Jun 20: Royalists sign articles of surrender at Oxford

1647

Earliest Baptist registers survive from this year

1648

 

Jan 30: Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück signed, ending the Eighty Years' War between the Netherlands and Spain

Society of Friends (Quakers) founded by George Fox

First practical thermometers made

1649

Jan 6: 'Rump' Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial

Jan 30: King Charles I executed (see 1660 for Regicides)

May 19: Commonwealth declared

Dec 20: Theatres banned by Cromwell

Christmas banned by Cromwell

Cromwell's Irish campaign starts

King Charles II proclaimed King of Scots and England in Scotland

1649-1660

Commonwealth Period – Oliver Cromwell

1650

Term 'Quaker' first used for Society of Friends

Coffee brought to England about this time

1651-1652

The second English Civil War

Sep 3: Battle of Worcester – see Oak-apple Day 1664

Scottish prisoners transported to the British settlements in America

1653

Commonwealth registers start

Apr 20: Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament

Dec 16: Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland

Under the Act of Settlement Cromwell's opponents stripped of land (in Ireland?)

Isaak Walton The Compleat Angler

1653-1660

Provincial probate courts abolished – probates granted only in London

1656

May 30: Formation of the Grenadier Guards, the most senior regiment of the Infantry in the British Army

1657

Post Office established by Act of Parliament [others say 1660]

A few Jews permitted to settle in England

1658

Sep 3: Death of Oliver Cromwell

Huygens pendulum clock

1658-1660

Richard Cromwell (son of Oliver) Lord Protector

1659

Feb 6: date of first known cheque to be drawn (some say 16th Feb)

Start of national meteorological Temperature records in the UK

1660s

Quaker-Scottish colony was established in East New Jersey

1660–

Restoration Period

1660

Jan 1: Samuel Pepys starts his diary

May 29: Restoration of British monarchy (Charles II) – 'Oak Apple Day' – theatres reopened

Commonwealth registers ended, Parish Registers resumed

Provincial Probate Courts re-established

Oct 17: Ten Regicides are executed at Charing Cross or Tyburn: Thomas Harrison, John Jones, Adrian Scrope, John Carew, Thomas Scot and Gregory Clement, who had signed the death warrant; the preacher Hugh Peters; Francis Hacker and Daniel Axter, who commanded the soldiers at the trial and the execution of the king; and John Cook the solicitor who directed the prosecution [Encyclopedia Britannica]

Nov 28: Twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society

Dec 8: First actress plays in London (Margaret Hughes as Desdemona)

Clarendon code restricts Puritans' religious freedom

Composition of light discovered by Newton

Honourable East India Company founded by British
Officers commissions and pension records start

First British in Japan

Scotland adopts Gregorian calendar

1661

Jan 30: Oliver Cromwell ritually 'executed', having been dead for over two years!

Persecution of Non-conformists in England

Restoration of Episcopacy in Scotland

Board of Trade founded in London

Hand-struck postage stamps first used

Corporation Act prevents non-Anglicans from holding municipal office

1662

Hearth Tax – until 1689 (1690 in Scotland)

Poor Relief Act or "Act of Settlement" – gave JPs the power to return any wandering poor to the parish of origin (repealed 1834)

Aug 24: Act of Uniformity – Acceptance of Book of Common Prayer required – About 2,000 vicars and rectors driven from their parishes as nonconformists (Presbyterians and Independents) – Persecution of all non-conformists – Presbyterianism dis-established – Episcopalian Church of England restored

Tea introduced to Britain

The year in which highest number (402) of people were accused of witchcraft in Scotland – see details

1663

Earliest Roman Catholic registers

1664

May 29: Oak Apple Day – the birthday of Charles II and the day when he entered London at the Restoration; commanded by Act of Parliament in 1664 to be observed as a day of thanksgiving. A special service (expunged in 1859) was inserted in the Book of Common Prayer and people wore sprigs of oak with gilded oak-apples on that day. It commemorates Charles II's concealment with Major Careless in the 'Royal Oak' at Boscobel, near Shifnal, Shropshire, after his defeat at Worcester on 3 Sept 1651.

Aug 27: Nieuw Amsterdam becomes New York as 300 English soldiers under Col. Mathias Nicolls take the town from the Dutch under orders from Charles II. The town is renamed after the King's brother James, Duke of York

1665

Great Plague of London (July-October) kills over 60,000

Nov 7: The London Gazette first published – one of the official journals of record of the United Kingdom government, and the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United Kingdom

Five-mile Act restricts non-conformist ministers in Britain

1666

Sep 2-6: Great Fire of London, after a drought beginning 27 June

Use of semaphore signalling pioneered by Lord Worcester

Act of Parliament – burials to be in woollen

Newton formulated Laws of Gravity

1666-1689

Considerable religious unrest on Scotland (The Covenanters) – Covenanters Rising at St John's Town of Dalry

1667

John Milton Paradise Lost

1668

British East India Company obtains control of Bombay

Newton constructs reflecting telescope

1669

May 31: Last entry in Pepys's diary (see 1825 for publication)

Earliest Lutheran registers survive from this year

1670

Earliest Synagogue registers – Bevis Marks

Dryden appointed Poet Laureate

May 2: Start of Hudson's Bay Company in Canada

May 26: King Charles II and King Louis XIV of France sign the Secret Treaty of Dover

1671

May 9: Thomas Blood caught stealing the Crown Jewels

1672

High Court of Justiciary established in Scotland

War with Holland (to 1674) – British Army increased to 10,000 men

1673

First Test Act deprives British Catholics and Non-conformists of Public Office

1674

Nov 8: John Milton dies in London

Nov 10: Treaty of Westminster – Netherlands cedes New Netherlands (on the eastern coast of North America) to Britain

1675

Beginning of Whig party under Shaftsbury

Mar 4: John Flamsteed appointed first Astronomer Royal of England

Aug 10: Building of Royal Greenwich Observatory started

Rebuilding of St Paul's started by Wren (completed 1710)

1676

Compton Census, named after its initiator Henry Compton, Bishop of London, was intended to discover the number of Anglican conformists, Roman Catholic recusants and Protestant dissenters in England and Wales from enquiries made in individual parishes

1677

Lee's "Collection of Names of Merchants in London" published

1678

Extension of Test Act to peers

1679

May 27: Habeas Corpus Act becomes law in England – (later repealed from time to time)

Jun 22: Battle of Bothwell Brig in Scotland – Covenanter rebels routed

Tories first so named

Burial in Woollen more strictly enforced

1680

William Dockwra(y) begins his London Penny Post

Dodo becomes extinct in Mauritius through over-hunting

1680-1770

Chinoiserie Period (Art & Antiques)

1681

Second Test Act (against non-conformists) passed by Westminster Parliament

Oil lighting first used in London streets

1682

Pennsylvania founded by William Penn

Library of Advocates founded in Edinburgh – later National Library of Scotland

Halley observes the comet which bears his name and predicted its return in 1759

1683

Jun 6: Ashmolean Museum opened at Oxford – first museum in Britain

Climate: Coldest 'Frost fair' in London

Wild boar become extinct in Britain

1684

Presbyterian settlement in Stuart's Town in South Carolina

Huguenot registers begin in London

1685

Earl of Argyll's Invasion of Scotland

James the Second (1685-1689, died 1701) – Monmouth rebellion and battle of Sedgemoor – British Army raised to 20,000 men

Judge Jeffreys and the Bloody Assizes – 320 executed, 800 transported

Oct 18: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes – drove thousands of Protestants (Huguenots) from France – many settled in England

1686

Release of all prisoners held for their religious beliefs

1687

Apr 4: James II issues the Declaration of Indulgence, suspending laws against Catholics and non-conformists

Jul 5: Newton published his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica – written in Latin

Sep 26: The Parthenon in Athens, used as a gunpowder magazine by the Ottomans, exploded during an attack by the Venetians

1688

Feb: Edward Lloyd's Coffee House opens – later became Lloyd's of London

Nov: The Glorious Revolution: James II abdicates – William of Orange lands at Torbay on 5 Nov – William III and Mary II, daughter of James II, jointly take the throne 13 Feb 1689 – (only William, however, has regal power)

British Army raised to 40,000

Bill of Rights limits the powers of the monarchy over parliament

Hearth Tax abolished

Mutiny Act

1689

Mar 12: Deposed James VII & II flees to Ireland – defeated at the Battle of the Boyne (1 Jul 1690)

May 24: Toleration Act passed for Protestant non-conformists

Jul 27: Battle of Killiecrankie in Scotland – Jacobites defeated Government troops but at high cost

Siege of Londonderry (began Dec 1688; ended 28 Jul 1689)

Dec 16: Bill of Rights passed by Parliament, ending King's divine right to raise taxes or wage war

Earliest Royal Dutch Chapel registers

Devonport naval dockyard established

1690

Great Synagogue founded

Presbyterianism finally established in Scotland

May 20: England passes Act of Grace, forgiving Roman Catholic followers of James II

Jul 1 (New Style, 12 Jul): Battle of the Boyne – Jacobite forces defeated by William

Aug 24: Job Charnock established his East India Company headquarters in a location he called Calcutta

1691

Earliest date in known German Lutheran registers

1692

Feb 13: The massacre of Glencoe – Clan Campbell sides with King William and murders members of Clan McDonald

Land Tax introduced – originally designed as an annual tax on personal estate, public offices and land. For practical purposes, however, assessors tended to avoid assessing items of wealth other than landed property so that it became known as the Land Tax. Counties were assessed at a fixed sum and the parish quotas were rarely altered. No systematic revaluation of properties was ever made after 1698 so that assessments tended to reflect the initial late-seventeenth century values. Its records in detail are usually available between 1780 and 1831.

French intention to invade England came to naught

1693

Aug 4: Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Pierre Pérignon 's invention of Champagne

Some Thoughts Concerning Education published by John Locke

1693–1700

Climate: Oat harvest failed repeatedly in Scotland – widespread starvation

1694

National Debt came into effect in England

Stamp Duties introduced into Britain from Holland

Jul 27: Bank of England founded by William Paterson (a Scot)

Mary II death leaves William III as sole ruler

Triennial Act, new Parliamentary elections every three years

1694-1699

Scotland: Poll Tax imposed on all over sixteen, except the destitute and insane

1695

Freedom of Press in England

Bank of Scotland founded

Act of Parliament imposes a fine on all who fail to inform the parish minister of the birth of a child (repealed 1706, but see 1783)

Start of "Dissenters" lists in parish registers – children born but not christened in the parish church – some were named "Papist" and others "Protestants"

Dec 31: Window Tax (replaced Hearth Tax; increased in 1747; abolished 1851 when it was replaced by House Duty)

1696

Act of Parliament establishes Workhouses

Education Act passed by Scottish Parliament

1697

Dec 2: Official opening of rebuilt St Paul's Cathedral

1698

Jan 4: Most of the Palace of Whitehall in London destroyed by fire

Invention of steam engine by Capt Thomas Savery

Darien Expedition: a disastrous attempt to establish a Scots settlement in Panama

Duties (taxes) on entries in parish registers – repealed after five years

Nov 14: Eddystone Lighthouse (Henry Winstanley's) first lit; completed 10 days earlier (but see 1703)

1700

Population in England and Scotland approx 7.5 million

1701

Act of Settlement bars Catholics from the British throne

May 23: After being convicted of piracy and murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd hanged in London

1702-1714

Queen Anne Period (Art & Antiques)

1702

Mar 8: Anne Stuart becomes Queen

Mar 11: First English daily newspaper The Daily Courant (till 1735)

War of Spanish Succession (1702-1713)

1703

Repeal of Duties on entries in Parish Registers

Nov 24–Dec 2: Climate: Most violent storms of the millennium cause vast damage across southern England – about a third of Britain's merchant fleet lost, and Eddystone lighthouse destroyed on 27 Nov (see 1755); it "produced so deep an impression upon the people of the period that it was familiarly spoken of as 'The Storm' throughout the whole of the eighteenth century"—Grant Allen, in his notes to the 1900 edition of Gilbert White's 'Natural History of Selborne'

1704

Aug 4: British take Gibraltar

Aug 13: Battle of Blenheim

Penal Code enacted – Catholics barred from voting, education and the military

Newton Optics, his theories of light and colour – written in English

1705

First workable steam pumping engine devised by Thomas Newcomen (some say c1710 or 1711)

Isaac Newton knighted (for his work at the Royal Mint)

1706

May 23: Battle of Ramillies

First evening newspaper The Evening Post issued in London

1707

Jan 16: Union with Scotland – Scots agree to send 16 peers and 45 MPs to English Parliament in return for full trading privileges – Scottish Parliament meets for the last time in March

May 1: English and Scottish Parliaments united by an Act of the English Parliament – The Kingdom of Great Britain established – largest free-trade area in Europe at the time

Last use of veto by a British sovereign

1708

First Jacobite rising in Scotland

Earliest Artillery Muster Rolls

1709

Feb 2: Alexander Selkirk rescued from shipwreck on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe (published in 1719) by Daniel Defoe

Second Eddystone lighthouse completed (see 1755)

First Copyright Act passed

Bad harvests throughout Europe – bread riots in Britain

1710

Tax on Apprentice Indentures

1711

Aug 11: First race meeting at Ascot

Incorporation of South Sea Company, in London

1712

Imposition of Soap Tax (abolished 1853)

Last trial for witchcraft in England (Jane Wenham)

Toleration Act passed – first relief to non-Anglicans

Patronage Act – patronage of ministers restored

1713

Apr 11: Treaty of Utrecht concludes the War of the Spanish Succession – Newfoundland and Gibraltar ceded to Britain

By this year there are some 3,000 coffee houses in London

1714

Aug 1: Queen Anne Stuart dies – George I Hanover becomes king (1714-1727).

Chancery Proceedings filed under Six Clerks.

Longitude Act: prize of £20,000 offered to the inventor of a workable method of determining a ship's longitude (won by John Harrison in 1773 for his chronometer).

Schism Act, prevents Dissenters from being schoolmasters in England.

Landholders forced to take the Oath of Allegiance and renounce Roman Catholicism.

Quarter Sessions Records from this date often mention Protestant dissenters and Roman Catholic recusants.

Handel Water Music

1715

Aug 1: Riot Act passed

Second Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, under the Old Pretender ('The Fifteen')

1716

The Septennial Act of Britain leads to greater electoral corruption – general elections now to be held once every 7 years instead of every 3 (until 1911)

Climate: Thames frozen so solid that a spring tide lifted the ice bodily 13ft without interrupting the frost fair

1717

First Masonic Lodge opens in London

Value of the golden guinea fixed at 21 shillings

1719

Third abortive Jacobite rising

Defoe Robinson Crusoe

1720

South Sea Bubble, a stock-market crash on Exchange Alley – government assumes control of National Debt

Manufacturing towns start to increase in population – rise of new wealth

Wallpaper becomes fashionable in England

1721

Apr 2: Robert Walpole (Whig) becomes first Prime Minister (to 1742)

Bailey's Northern Directory

1722

Last trial for witchcraft in Scotland [but Wikipedia gives 1727 as last execution for witchcraft in Scotland]

Knatchbull's Act, poor laws

1723

Excise tax levied for coffee, tea, and chocolate

The Waltham Black Acts add 50 capital offences to the penal code – people could be sentenced to death for theft and poaching – repealed in 1827

The Workhouse Act or Test – to get relief, a poor person has to enter Workhouse

1724

Rapid growth of gin drinking in England

Longman's founded (Britain's oldest publishing house)

1725-1726

Treaty of Hanover: France, Prussia, Britain v. Spain, Austria

1726

First circulating library opened in Edinburgh

Invention of the chronometer by John Harrison

Swift Gulliver's Travels

1727

Board of Manufacturers established in Scotland

Jun 11: George I dies – George II Hanover becomes king

1729

Methodists begin at Oxford

Nov 9: Treaty of Seville signed between Britain, France and Spain – Britain maintained control of Port Mahon and Gibraltar

Bach St Matthew Passion

1730

Irish famine

1730-1750

Rococo Period (Art & Antiques)

1731

Invention of seed drill by Jethro Tull [others say 1701]

Invention of sextant by John Hadley

1732

Jun 9: James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of Georgia

Dec 7: Covent Garden Opera House opens

Earliest Cavalry and Infantry Muster Rolls

1733

Feb 12: James Oglethorpe founds Savannah, Georgia

Excise crisis: Sir Robert Walpole wanted to add excise tax to tobacco and wine – Pulteney and Bolingbroke oppose the excise tax

Law forbidding the use of Latin in parish registers generally obeyed – some continued in Latin for a few years

John Kay invents the flying shuttle, revolutionised the weaving industry

1734

Kent's Directory

1737

Licensing Act restricts the number of London theatres and subjects plays to censorship of the Lord Chamberlain (till 1950s)

1738

Earliest Calvinistic Methodist registers

May 24: John Wesley has his conversion experience

1739

Apr 7: Dick Turpin, highwayman, hanged at York

Oct 23: War of Jenkins' Ear starts: Robert Walpole reluctantly declares war on Spain: "They are ringing their bells, soon they will be wringing their hands"

Wesley and Whitefield commence great Methodist revival

1741

Benjamin Ingham founded the Moravian Methodists or Inghamites – Earliest Moravian registers

Earliest Scotch Church registers

Handel The Messiah (first performed in Dublin 13 Apr 1742)

1742

England goes to war with Spain – incited by William Pitt the Elder (Earl of Chatham) for the sake of trade

1743

Jun 16 (June 27 in Gregorian calendar): Battle of Dettingen – last time a British sovereign (George II) led troops in battle

1744

Church of Scotland split over taking of Burgess' Oath – Burghers and Anti-Burghers

First Methodist Conference

Tune God Save the King makes its appearance

1745

Jacobite rebellion in Scotland ('The Forty-five')

Aug 19: Bonnie Prince Charlie (The Young Pretender) lands in the western Highlands – raises support among Episcopalian and Catholic clans – The Pretender's army invades Perth, Edinburgh, and England as far as Derby

1746

Apr 16: Battle of Culloden – last battle fought in Britain – 5,000 Highlanders routed by the Duke of Cumberland and 9,000 loyalists Scots – Young Pretender Charles flees to Continent, ending Jacobite hopes forever – the wearing of the kilt prohibited

Glass Tax introduced – resulted in smaller windows – repealed in 1845

1747

Apr 9: Lord Lovat beheaded on Tower Hill aged 80, the last person to be executed in this manner

Abolition of Heritable Jurisdictions in Scotland

Act for Pacification of the Highlands

1748-1756

Countess of Huntington's (Calvinistic) Methodist Connexion founded

1749

Apr 27: First performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks (in Green Park, London) – to celebrate the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ending the War of the Austrian Succession

1750-1770

Gothic Revival Period (Art & Antiques)

1750-1805

Neo-Classical Period (Art & Antiques)

1750

Feb/Mar: Series of earthquakes in London and the Home Counties cause panic with predictions of an apocalypse

Nov 16: Original Westminster Bridge opened (replaced in 1862 due to subsidence)

1751

March: Chesterfield's Calendar Act passed – royal assent to the bill was given on 22 May 1751 – decision to adopt Gregorian Calendar in 1752: "In and throughout all his Majesty's Dominions and Countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, belonging or subject to the Crown of Great Britain, the said Supputation, according to which the Year of our Lord beginneth on the 25th Day of March, shall not be made use of from and after the last Day of December 1751; and that the first Day of January next following the said last Day of December shall be reckoned, taken, deemed and accounted to be the first Day of the Year of our Lord 1752" — i.e. 1752 started on 1 January, so that 1751 was a short year.

Gin Act passed

1752

Jan 1: Beginning of the year 1752 [Scotland had adopted January as the start of the year in 1600, and some other countries in Europe had adopted the Gregorian calendar as early as 1582]

Sep 3: Julian Calendar dropped and Gregorian Calendar adopted in England and Scotland, making this Sep 14 – "Give us back our 11 days!"

Benjamin Franklin invents a lightning conductor

1753

Earliest Inghamite registers

May 1: Publication of Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, and the formal start date of plant taxonomy

Private collection of Sir Hans Sloane forms the basis of the British Museum

1754

Mar 25: Hardwicke Act (1753): Banns to be called, and Printed Marriage Register forms to be used – Quakers & Jews exempt

In the General Election, the Cow Inn at Haslemere, Surrey caused a national scandal by subdividing the freehold to create eight votes instead of one

First British troops not belonging to the East India Company despatched to India

First printed Annual Army Lists

1755

Apr 15: Publication of Dictionary of the English Language by Dr Samuel Johnson

Period of canal construction began in Britain (till 1827)

Nov 1: Earthquake and tsunami destroys Lisbon – up to 90,000 dead

Dec 2: Second Eddystone Lighthouse destroyed by fire (see 1759)

1756

May 15: The Seven Years War with France (Pitt's trade war) begins

Jun: Black Hole of Calcutta – 146 Britons imprisoned, most die according to British sources

1757

Mar 14: Admiral Byng shot at Portsmouth for failing to relieve Minorca – or as the French put it: "Les anglais tuent de temps à temps un amiral pour encourager les autres"

India: The Nawab of Bengal tries to expel the British, but is defeated at the battle of Plassey (Palashi, June 23) – the East India Company forces are led by Robert Clive

The foundation laid for the Empire of India

1758

India stops being merely a commercial venture – England begins dominating it politically – The East India Company retains its monopoly although it ceased to trade

1759

Jan 15: British Museum opens to the public in London

Mar: First predicted return of Halley's comet

Sep 13: Gen James Woolfe killed at Quebec (Battle of the Plains of Abraham)

Oct 16: Third Eddystone Lighthouse (John Smeaton's) completed (see 1882)

Wesley builds 356 Methodist chapels
Dec 31: Guinness starts being brewed

1760

Oct 25: George II dies – George III Hanover, his grandson, becomes king

The date conventionally marks the start of the so-called "first Industrial Revolution"

Carron Iron Works in operation in Scotland

May 5: First use of hangman's drop – last nobleman to be executed (Laurence, Earl Ferrers) at Tyburn

Beginning of intense Inclosure Acts in England

1761

Jan 16: British capture Pondicherry, India from the French

1762

Earliest Unitarian registers

France surrenders Canada and Florida

Cigars introduced into Britain from Cuba

Robert Lowth Short Introduction to English Grammar

1763

Treaty of Paris – gives back to France everything Pitt fought to obtain – (Newfoundland [fishing], Guadaloupe and Martininque [sugar], Dakar [gum]) – but English displaces French as the international language

1764

Lloyd's Register of shipping first prepared

Practice of numbering houses introduced to London

James Hargeaves invents the Spinning Jenny (but destroyed 1768)

Mozart produces his first symphony at age eight

1765

Mar 22: Stamp Act passed – imposed a tax on publications and legal documents in the American colonies (repealed the following year)

The potato becomes the most popular food in Europe

1766

Start of 'composite' national records on rainfall in the UK

Dec 5: Christie's auction house founded in London by James Christie

1767

First iron railroads built for mines by John Wilkinson

Newcomen's steam pumping engine perfected by James Watt

1768

Jan 9: Philip Astley starts his circus in London

Dec 6: The first edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" published in Edinburgh by William Smellie (see 2012)

1769

Sep 6: David Garrick organises first Shakespeare festival at Stratford-upon-Avon

Arkwright invents water frame (textile production)

Capt James Cook maps the coast of New Zealand

1770

Apr 28: Capt James Cook lands in Australia (Botany Bay) — Aug 21: formally claims Australia for Britain

Clyde Trust created to convert the River Clyde, then an insignificant river, into a major thoroughfare for maritime communications

1771

Right to report Parliamentary debates established in England

1772

May 14: Judge Mansfield rules that there is no legal basis for slavery in England

First Navy Lists published

First Travellers' Cheques issued by the London Credit Exchange Company

Morning Post first published (until 1937)

1773-1858

The East India Company governs Hindustan

1773

Government prize for accurate determination of Longitude (first offered in 1714) won by John Harrison for his chronometer

Dec 16: Boston Tea Party

Waltz becomes fashionable in Vienna

1774

First recorded cricket match (some say 1719, Londoners v Kentish Men – Wikipedia disagrees with both!)

Sep 13: Cook arrives on Easter Island

1775

Apr 19: Battle of Lexington: first action in American War of Independence (1775–1783)

1776

Jul 4: American Declaration of Independence

Somerset House in London becomes the repository of records of population

Watt and Boulton produce their first commercial steam engine (see 1782)

Sep 7: First attack on a warship by a submarine – David Bushnell's "Turtle" attacked HMS Eagle in New York harbour. The attack was perhaps spectacular (a charge did detonate beneath the ship), but was nevertheless unsuccessful. "Turtle" was a one man affair, man-powered [Les Moore] (see 1864)

1777

Samuel Miller of Southampton patents the circular saw.

1779

Feb 14: Capt James Cook killed on Hawaii

Crompton's mule invented (textile production)

Marc Isambard Brunel opens the first steamdriven sawmill at Chatham Dockyard in Kent

First iron bridge built, over the Severn by John Wilkinson

First Spinning Mills operational in Scotland

Sep 23: Naval engagement between Britain and USA off Flamborough Head

1780

May 4: First Derby run at Epsom (some say 2nd June)

Jun 2–8: The Gordon Riots – Parliament passes a Roman Catholic relief measure – for days, London is at the mercy of a mob and destruction is widespread

Earliest Wesleyan registers

Male Servants Tax

The English Reform Movement – until now, only landowners and tenants (freeholders with 40 shillings per year or more) allowed to vote, and in open poll books

Circular saw and Fountain pen invented

About this time the word 'Quiz' entered the language, said to have been invented as a wager by Mr Daly, a Dublin theatre manager

1781

Mar 13: Sir William Herschel discovers Uranus

Oct 19: Lord Cornwallis's army surrenders to George Washington; ends the American War of Independence

1782

Gilbert's Act establishes outdoor poor relief – the way of life of the poor beginning to alter due to industrialisation – New factories in rapidly expanding towns required a workforce that would adjust to new work patterns

James Watt patents his steam engine

1783

Duty made payable on Parish Register entries (3d per entry) – led to a fall in entries! – it was repealed 1794

Jun 4: Montgolfier brothers launch first hot-air balloon (unmanned), at Annonay, France

Jul: Climate: hottest month on record until 1983; Gilbert White in his 'Natural History of Selborne' says: "The summer of 1783 was an amazing and portenteous one, and full of horrible phenomena; for, besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunder storms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze or smoky fog that prevailed for many weeks in this island and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance unlike anything known within the memory of man"—he put it down to volcanic activity. Apparently it was caused by the eruption of Laki in Iceland which continued from 8th Jun 1783 to 7th February 1784

Sep 3: Treaty of Versailles (Britain/US)

Nov 3: Last public execution at Tyburn in London (John Austin, a highwayman)

Nov 21: First untethered hot-air balloon flight with humans aboard, in Paris

Blake Poetical Sketches

1784

Pitt's India Act – the Crown (as opposed to officers of the East India Company) has power to guide Indian politics

Wesley breaks with the Church of England

Aug 2: First mail coaches in England (4pm Bristol / 8am London)

First golf club founded at St Andrews

Invention of threshing machine by Andrew Meikle

1785

Jan 1: John Walter publishes first edition of The Times (called The Daily Universal Register for 3 years)

Jan 7: Blanchard & Jeffries make first balloon crossing of the English Channel, taking about 2½ hours to travel from England to France

Sunday School Society founded to educate poor children (by 1851, enrols more than 2 million)

1786

Aug 8: Mont Blanc climbed for the first time

Mozart Marriage of Figaro

1787

Earliest known Swedenborgian (Church of the New Jerusalem or Jerusalemite) registers

MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) established at Thomas Lord's ground in London

1788

Jan 26: First convicts (and free settlers) arrive in New South Wales (left Portsmouth 13 May 1787) — the 'First Fleet'; eleven ships commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip

First steamboat demonstrated in Scotland [but see 1802]

Law passed requiring that chimney sweepers be a minimum of 8 years old (not enforced)

First slave carrying act, the Dolben Act of 1788, regulates the slave trade – stipulates more humane conditions on slave ships

King George III's mental illness occasions the Regency Crisis – Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox attack ministry of William Pitt – trying to obtain full regal powers for the Prince of Wales

Gibbon completes Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

1789

Apr 28: Mutiny on HMS Bounty – Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew ends up on Pitcairn Island

Jul 14: The French Revolution begins – storming of the Bastille

Publication of Gilbert White's 'Natural History of Selborne'

1790

Forth and Clyde Canal opened in Scotland

1791

Sugar prices rise steeply

John Bell, printer, abandons the "long s" (the "s" that looks like an "f")

Establishment of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain

Dec 4: First publication of The Observer – world's oldest Sunday newspaper

`

Repression in Britain (restrictions on freedom of the press) – Fox gets Libel Act through Parliament, requiring a jury and not a judge to determine libel

Boyle's Street Directory published

Oct 1: Introduction of Money Orders in Britain

Coal-gas lighting invented by William Murdock, an Ayrshire Scot

Dec 1: King's Proclamation drawing out the British militia

1793

Feb 11: Britain declares war on France (1793-1802)

Execution of Louis XVI – Reign of Terror starts in France

Apr 15: £5 notes first issued by the Bank of England

Jun 26: Gilbert White, naturalist, dies at Selborne, Hampshire

1794

Abolition of Parish Register duties

Mar 14: Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin (in America)

Jun 1: Battle of Glorious First of June

Oct 6: The prosecutor for Britain, Lord Justice Eyre, charges reformers with High Treason – he argued that, since reform of parliament would lead to revolution and revolution to executing the King, the desire for reform endangered the King's life and was therefore treasonous

Lindley Murray English Grammar

1795

The Famine Year

Foundation of the Orange Order

Speenhamland Act proclaims that the Parish is responsible for bringing up the labourer's wage to subsistence level – towards the end of the eighteenth century, the number of poor and unemployed increased dramatically – price increases during the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815) far outstripped wage rises – many small farmers were bankrupted by the move towards enclosures and became landless labourers – their wages were often pitifully low

Pitt and Grenville introduce "The Gagging Acts" or "Two Bills" (the Seditious Meetings and Treasonable Practices Bills) – outlawed the mass meeting and the political lecture

Consumption of lime juice made compulsory in Royal Navy

France adopts the metric system

1796

May 14: Dr Edward Jenner gave first vaccination for smallpox in England

Holden's Triennial Directory published

Pitt's "Reign of Terror": More treason trials – leading radicals emigrate

Legacy Tax on sums over £20 excluding those to wives, children, parents and grandparents

1797

Feb 14: Battle of Cape St Vincent

Feb 22: French invade Fishguard, Wales; last time UK invaded; all captured 2 days later

England in Crisis, Bank of England suspends cash payments

Feb 26: First £1 (and £2) notes issued by Bank of England

Apr-Jun: Mutinies in the British Navy at Spithead and Nore

Oct 22: Possibly the first parachute jump (by André-Jacques Garnerin above Paris)

Tax on newspapers (including cheap, topical journals) increased to repress radical publications

The first copper pennies were produced ('cartwheels') by application of steam power to the coining press

1798

Feb-Oct: The Irish Rebellion; 100,000 peasants revolt; approximately 25,000 die – Irish Parliament abolished

Aug 1: Battle of the Nile (won by Nelson)

First planned human experiment with vaccination, to test theories of Edward Jenner

Malthus Essay on Population

1799

Jan 9: Pitt brings in 10% income tax, as a wartime financial measure

Jul 12: 'Combination Laws' in Britain against political associations and combinations

Foundation of Royal Military College Sandhurst by the Duke of York

Foundation of the Royal Institution of Great Britain

Post Office New Annual Directory

Jul 15: Rosetta Stone discovered in Egypt, made possible the deciphering (in 1822) of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics

Perfect mammoth discovered preserved in ice in Siberia

1800

Jul 2: Parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland

Malta became a British Dominion

Electric light first produced by Sir Humphrey Davy

Use of high pressure steam pioneered by Richard Trevithick (1771-1833)

Earliest Bible Christian registers

Royal College of Surgeons founded

Herschel discovers infra-red light

Volta makes first electrical battery

British trade accounts for about 27% of world trade

1801

Jan 1: Union Jack official British flag – The Kingdom of Ireland merged with the Kingdom of Great Britain, adding St. Patrick's saltire to the Union Flag

Mar 10: First census puts the population of England and Wales at 9,168,000 – population of Britain nearly 11 million (75% rural)

Grand Union Canal opens in England

Surrey iron railway, on which horse-drawn trucks carry coal and farm produce

Richard Trevithick built the first self-propelled passenger carrying road loco and ran it on Christmas Eve 1801

Elgin Marbles brought from Athens to London

1802

Mar 25 ("4 Gerninal" on the French Revolutionary calendar): Treaty of Amiens signed by Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands – the "Peace of Amiens," as it was known, brought a temporary peace of 14 months during the Napoleonic Wars – one of its most important cultural effects was that travel and correspondence across the English Channel became possible again

Charlotte Dundas on Clyde, first practical steamship, built by William Symington

First British Factory Act

William Cobbett begins his weekly Political Register

Regular mail service started between England and India

1803

Invention of paper-making machine (Fourdrinier brothers) – others say invented by Robert (another Frenchman) in 1798, and developed by the Fourdriniers

Apr 30: Louisiana Purchase: Napoleon sells French possessions in America to United States

May 12: Peace of Amiens ends – resumption of war with France – The Napoleonic Wars (1803-18l5)

William Cobbett began unofficial publication of Parliamentary reports (taken over by Hansard report in 1811)

First publication of Debrett's Peerage by John Debrett

Poaching made a Capital offence in England if capture resisted

Richard Trevithick built another steam carriage and ran it in London as the first self-propelled vehicle in the capital and the first London bus

Jul 26: First public railway opens (Surrey Iron Railway, 9 miles from Wandsworth to Croydon, horse-drawn)

Semaphore signalling perfected by Admiral Popham

Commissioners for Highland Roads and Bridges created in Scotland; Thomas Telford begins construction

1804

Feb 21: Richard Trevithick runs his railway engine on the Penydarren Railway (9.5 miles from Pen-y-Darren to Abercynon in South Wales) – this hauled a train with 10 tons of iron and 70 passengers.  It was commemorated by the Royal Mint in 2004 in the form of a £2.00 coin. (See 1829)

Mar 3: John Wedgwood (eldest son of the potter Josiah Wedgwood) founds The Royal Horticultural Society

Mar 21: Code Napoleon adopted in France

Dec 2: Napoleon declares himself Emperor of the French

Dec 12: Spain declares war on Britain

Matthew Flinders recommends that the newly discovered country, New Holland, be renamed "Australia"

Blake Jerusalem (later set to music by Parry)

1805

Oct 21: Admiral Nelson's victory at Trafalgar

Nov 26: Official opening of Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

Dec 2: Battle of Austerlitz; Napoleon defeats Austrians and Russians

London docks opened

1806

Jan 9: Nelson buried in St Paul's cathedral, London

Earliest Primitive Methodist registers

Napoleon attempts European economic blockade of Britain

Dartmoor Prison opened (built by French prisoners)

Carbon paper invented by Ralph Wedgwood

1807

Mar 25: Parliament passes Act prohibiting slavery and the importation of slaves from 1808 – but does not prohibit colonial slavery

Jul 13: 'Hot Wednesday' – temperature of 101°F in the shade recorded in London

Gas lighting in London streets

1808

Peninsular War (1808-1814)

Fourdrinier brothers set up first paper-making machine in England (at St Neots)

Trevithick operated a 'Catch-me-who-Can' demonstration railway with carriages in London for which he charged fares of one shilling

Beginning of 'Luddite' troubles in England (see 1811)

Dec 22: Beethoven premieres his Fifth Symphony, Sixth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy together in Vienna

1809

Jan 16: Peninsular War – Battle of La Coruña – Sir John Moore killed: "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note …"

Feb 12: Birth of Charles Darwin

Sep 18: Royal Opera House opens in London

John Dickinson introduces the Cylinder Machine for making paper boards

Gay-Lussac: Law of Volumes of Gases

1810

Bible Christians denomination formed by schism in Wesleyan Methodists

John McAdam begins road construction in England, giving his name to the process of road metalling (see 1845)

1811

Feb 1: Light first lit on Robert Stephenson's Inchcape (Bell) Rock lighthouse off Scotland

Feb 5: Prince of Wales (future George IV) made Regent after George III deemed insane

May 27: Second census of England & Wales

Nov: Luddite uprisings (machine breaking) in the Midlands against weaving frames started – went on until 1815 – groups of workmen rebelled against the increased mechanisation of textile production by destroying the new machinery – government fears revolutionary conspiracy – damaging property or taking Luddite oaths become capital offences

Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility

1812

May 11: Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, assassinated – shot as he entered the House of Commons by a bankrupt Liverpool broker, John Bellingham, who was subsequently hanged

Jun 18: Start of American "War of 1812" (to 1814) against England and Canada

Aug 24: Peninsular War – coalition forces including British succeed in lifting the two-and-a-half-year-long Siege of Cádiz

Oct–Dec: Napoleon retreats from Moscow with catastrophic losses

Comet steamship launched in Scotland, operated on the River Clyde

1813

'Policy for the Improvement of the Highlands' approved by British Parliament

May: Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth, lead an expedition westwards from Sydney

Ireland: First recorded "12th of July" sectarian riots in Belfast

Rose's Act (1812) established a printed format for baptism & burial registers

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

1814

"Year of the Burning" in Sutherland and Ross

Act of Burial in Woollen repealed

First Pigot's Commercial Directory printed

Jan 1: Invasion of France by Allies

Apr 6: Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba

Aug 13: Convention of London signed, a treaty between the UK and the Dutch

Aug 24: The British burn the White House

Nov 29: The Times first printed by a steam-powered 'mechanical apparatus' (at 1,100 sheets per hour)

Dec 2: Death of the Marquis de Sade, in an asylum

Dec 24: Treaty of Ghent signed ending the 1812 war between Britain and the US

Sugar prices reach record heights

1815

Mar 1: Napoleon escapes Elba; arrives in France

Jun 18: The Battle of Waterloo: Napoleon defeated and exiled to St. Helena

Corn Law passed with enormous benefit to landlords (see 1849)

Trial by Jury established in Scotland

Davy develops the safety lamp for miners

Nash Brighton Pavilion

1816

Economic depression - rise in wheat prices

Income tax abolished

Excise tax payable on paper production (start of papermaking Mill numbers) – until 1861

For the first time British silver coins were produced with an intrinsic value substantially below their face value – the first official 'token' coinage

Climate: the 'year without a summer' – followed a volcanic explosion of the mountain Tambora in Indonesia the previous year, the biggest volcanic explosion in 10,000 years

Cobbett's Register selling 40-60,000 copies per week

Large scale emigration to North America

Trans-Atlantic packet service begins

1817

Johnstone's London Directory printed

March of the Manchester Blanketeers; Habeas Corpus suspended

Constable Flatford Mill

1818

Manchester cotton spinners' strike

Oct 20: 'Convention of 1818' signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the US-Canada border on the 49th parallel for most of its length

Mary Shelley Frankenstein

1819

Feb 6: Stamford Raffles signs a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor establishing Singapore as a new trading post for the British East India Company

May/Jun: Savannah first steamship to cross Atlantic, reaching Liverpool 20 June 1819 (26 days, mostly under sail)

Aug 16: Peterloo Massacre at Manchester – a large, orderly group of 60,000 meets at St. Peter's Fields, Manchester – demand Parliamentary Reform – mounted troops charge on the meeting, killing 11 people and and maiming many others

Dec: Six Acts passed against radical political Unions – prohibits assemblies similar to St. Peter's Fields and imposes press censorship

Primitive bicycle, the Dandy Horse, becomes popular (see 1839)

Britain returns to gold standard

Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn

1820

Jan 29: Accession of George IV, previously Prince Regent

Cato Street Conspiracy – plot to assissinate British cabinet

Aug 1: Regent's Canal in London opens

Aug 17: Trial of Queen Caroline to prove her infidelities so George IV can divorce her – George tries to secure a Bill of Pains and Penalties against her – Caroline is virtually acquitted because bill passed by such a small majority of Lords

Nov 20: Whaling ship Essex attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific, leading to the story of Moby Dick
Cobbett's Rural Rides begin to appear in his Political Register (to 1830)

Abolition of the Spanish Inquisition

1821

May 5: Napoleon Bonaparte dies on St Helena

May 28: Third census of England & Wales

Faraday Principles of electro-magnetic rotation

Constable The Hay Wain

Populations: France 30.4M, German States 26M, Britain 20.8M, Italian States 18M, Austria 12M, the USA 9.6M

1822

Jun 14: Charles Babbage proposes a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society

Sep 27: Jean-François Champollion announces he has deciphered the Rosetta stone

Caledonian canal opened

Augustin Fresnel perfects lenses for lighthouses

Schubert Unfinished Symphony

1823

New laws concerning marriage by licence – 'very troublesome' according to some: "the Act was repealed, all in a hurry, at the beginning of the next session"

Scottish testaments prior to 1823 transferred to S.R.O.

Peel begins penal reforms – death penalty abolished for over 100 crimes

Dec 2: US President James Monroe delivers a speech establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts (the 'Monroe Doctrine')

Rugby Football 'invented' at Rugby School

(others think if happened later than this, possibly in the 1840s)

Rubberised waterproof material produced by MacIntosh

Monroe Doctrine: President James Monroe warns European powers not to interfere in the American continent

1824

Pitt's Combination Acts repealed (Trades Unions allowed)

Mar 4: Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) founded (called the "National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck" until 1854)

May 10: National Gallery in London opens to the public

RSPCA established

Portland cement patented

Carnot Puissance motrice du feu

Beethoven Ninth Symphony

1825

Horse-drawn buses in London (but see 1803 and 1829)

Sep 27: Stockton to Darlington Railway opens – world's first service of locomotive-hauled passenger trains

Hobhouse makes amendments to Acts to protect Child Labour in cotton factories

Publication of Pepys Diary

1826

Jan 30: Telford's Menai Straits Bridge opened – considered the world's first modern suspension bridge

Feb 11: University College, London established under the name "London University", as a secular alternative to the religious universities of Oxford and Cambridge

Scotland's first commercial railway was opened, Edinburgh to Dalkeith

White's first Commercial Directory – Hull

Royal Zoological Society established in London

Apr 1: Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine in America?

Ampere Electrodynamics

Mendelssohn Midsummer Night's Dream, overture

1827

Apr 7: First recorded sale of matches, from the store of John Walker of Stockton-on-Tees under the name 'Sulphurata Hyper-Oxygenata Frict'

Hallam Constitutional History of England (one of the first historians to use original documents in his research)

Ohm Ohm's Law (physics)

1828

Apr 28: Repeal of Test and Corporation Acts – had kept non-Anglicans (Catholics and Dissenters) from holding public office and deprived them of other rights

Oct 25: St Katharine Docks in London opened (designed by Thomas Telford)

O'Connell barred from the House of Commons as a Roman Catholic

Noah Webster American Dictionary of the English Language

1829

Apr 4: Catholic Emancipation Act restores civil liberties to Roman Catholics

Earliest Irvingite registers

Jul 4: First London omnibuses (pulled by three horses) introduced by George Shillibeer (but see 1825) – route between Paddington and Bank of England

London Metropolitan police force formed, nicknamed Bobbies after Sir Robert Peel

Jun 10: First Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race

Oct 6: George Stephenson's Rocket wins the Rainhill trials (it was the only one to complete the trial!) – was to haul the first 'commercial' passenger train (but see 1804)

Corrugated iron invented

by the London Dock Company

Lucifer matches first manufactured

Louis Braille invents his sytem of finger-reading for the blind

Rossini William Tell, opera

1830

Jun 26: George IV dies – his brother, William IV, accedes to the throne

July: Revolution in France, fall of Charles X and the Bourbons – Louis Philippe (the Citizen King) on the throne

Uprisings and agitation across Europe: the Netherlands are split into Holland and Belgium

Sep 15: George Stephenson's Liverpool & Manchester Railway opened by the Duke of Wellington – first mail carried by rail, and first death on the railway as William Huskisson, a leading politician, is run over!

Nov: Agricultural 'Swing' Riots in southern England, repressed with many transportations

Nov 22: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, becomes Prime Minister

Beerhouse Act liberalized regulations on the brewing and sale of beer by individuals – By this act it was possible for any householder assessed to the poor rate to sell beer, ale and cider without a licence from local justices; in the six months following its enaction, nearly 25,000 such excise licenses were taken out – The 1869 Wine and Beerhouse Act re-introduced stricter controls

Royal Geographical Society established in London

Hector Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

1830-1880

Eclectic Period (Art & Antiques)

1831

First Reform Bill introduced by Lord George Russell

A list of all parish registers dating prior to 1813 compiled

May 30: Fourth census of England & Wales

British Association for the Advancement of Science founded

Jun 1: James Clark Ross discovers the North Magnetic Pole

Aug 1: 'New' London Bridge opens (see 1968, replaced 1973) – old bridge (which had existed for over 600 years) then demolished

Aug 29: Faraday demonstrates electro-magnetic induction (the dynamo)

Dec 27: Darwin sails on HMS Beagle to survey coral formations

1832

Jun 7: Reform Bill passed – Representation of the People Act – dramatic effects for grossly underrepresented places like Scotland (the number of Scottish people allowed to vote increased from 4,000 to 65,000 out of 2.5 million people) – changed voting from an aristocratic privilege to a middle class right, but by later standards not much was accomplished – approximately doubled the electorate to about 800,000 voters out of a total population in Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales of around 24 million (1831 census), and increasing by 1 million a year

Electoral Registers introduced

Electric telegraph invented by Morse

Tennyson Lady of Shalott

1833

Jan: Britain invades the Falkland Islands

Aug 29: Factory Act forbids employment of children below age of 9

Education Grant Act – grants to voluntary education societies in Britain

Real Property Limitation Act – ends the device of using ficticious people in the sale of freehold property

1834

Poor Law amendment, tightening up relief

Mar 18: 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' transported (to Australia) for Trades Union activities

May 1: Slavery abolished in British possessions

Dec 17: Dublin and Kingstown Railway opens in Ireland

Dec 23: Hansom Cab patented by Joseph Hansom

Babbage invents forerunner of the computer

1835

Christmas becomes a national holiday

Earliest Universalist registers

Municipal Corporations Act – major changes in England and Wales

Word 'socialism' first used

First surviving photograph taken by William Fox Talbot

First railway boom period starts in Britain – construction of Great Western Railway

Jun 18: William Cobbett dies

Dec 1: Hans Christian Andersen publishes his first book of fairy tales

Melbourne, Australia founded

Darwin studies the Galapagos Islands

1836

First Potato famine in Ireland

Economic downturn that lasts until 1842

Tithe Commutation Act – tithe maps created as a by-product over the next 15 years or so

Newspaper tax reduced from 4 pence to one penny

Feb 25: Samuel Colt patented the 'revolver'

Mar 6: The Alamo falls to Mexican troops – death of Davy Crockett

Jul: Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris

Dec 27: Avalanche in Lewes, Sussex buries 15 people, 8 died

1837

Mar 14: Wheatstone & Cooke send first British telegraph message (some say 25 Jul – the electric telegraph was patented in May)

Jun 20: William IV dies – accession of Queen Victoria (to 1901)

Jul 1: Compulsory registration of Births, Marriages & Deaths in England & Wales – Registration Districts were formed covering several parishes; initially they had the same boundaries as the Poor Law boundaries set up in 1834

Jul 13: Queen Victoria moves into the first Buckingham Palace

Jul 20: Euston Railway station opens – first in London

Pitman introduces his shorthand system

P&O Founded

Dickens Pickwick Papers

1838

Jun 28: Coronation of Queen Victoria at Westminster Abbey

Chartists in Britain publish People's Charter demanding popular involvement in politics – huge demonstrations (estimated 100.000 Glasgow, 200,000 Birmingham, 300,000 West Yorkshire)

First ocean steamers to the U.S. – SS Great Western 14½ days; SS Sirius 18 days

SS Archimedes launched – first successful screw-driven ship

Daguerre produces photographs using silver salts

1838-1849

The Chartist Movement – a working-class movement for the extension of the franchise – 6-point charter: universal suffrage, secret ballot, annual elections, payment of Members, no property qualification for MPs, equal electoral districts

1839

Nov 4: The Newport Rising, to liberate Chartist prisoners – the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain

First Opium War between Britain and China (to 1842) – Britain captures Hong Kong

Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick MacMillan refines the primitive bicycle, adding a mechanical crank drive to the rear wheel, thus creating the first true "bicycle" in the modern sense (see 1819)

Samuel Cunard establishes his Cunard Steamship Co.

John Herschel takes the first glass plate photograph

Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber

Daguerreotype photography process announced in France, developed by Louis Daguerre

First: Grand National, Henley Regatta, Royal Agricultural Show

1840

Jan 10: Uniform Penny Postage introduced nationally

Rowland Hill also introduces envelopes

Feb 6: Treaty of Waitangi signed – Maori chiefs in New Zealand recognise British sovereignty in return for tribes being guaranteed possession of their lands

Feb 10: Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Last convicts landed in NSW (some say 1842 or 1849, but these probably landed elsewhere)

Chimney Sweeps Act in Britain

Population Act relating to taking of censuses in Britain

Civil Registration in Guernsey started

 

Britain has 24% of steam tonnage, and 24% of world trade

'Can-Can' becomes popular in France

1841

Feb 10: Penny Red replaces Penny Black postage stamp

June 6: Fifth census of England & Wales – First full census in Britain in which all names were recorded

Population: Britain 18.5M, USA 17M, Ireland 8M

Whitworth standard screw threads proposed

Thomas Cook starts package tours

Jul 17: First issue of Punch

1842

Mail steamship to India

Civil Registration in Jersey started

Second Chartist Petition presented to Parliament

Income Tax reintroduced in Britain

Government report 'The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population'

Depression: 60% of Bolton cotton mill workers and 36% of Bolton ironworkers out of work

British Mines Act outlawing women and girls in the mines, and supervising boy labour

Copyright Act

Mar 30: Ether used as an anaesthetic for the first time (by Dr Crawford Long in America)

British massacred in Khyber Pass

Aug 29: Treaty of Nanking – End of First Opium War – Britain gains Hong Kong

Illustrated London News published

Start of Mudie's Lending Library, charging subscribers one guinea per year for the right to borrow one volume of a novel at a time

First chemical fertiliser, superphosphate of lime, manufactured by Bennet Lawes in Deptford, England

Tennyson Poems establishes his fame

Doppler Effect stated

Turner Steamer in Snowstorm

1843

First Christmas card in England

May 27: The Great Hall of Euston station opened in London

Jul 19: Brunel's 'Great Britain' launched

Disruption of the Church of Scotland – 474 ministers signed the Deed of Demission and formed the Free Church of Scotland (the "Wee Free")

Factory safety regulations enacted in Britain

First public telegraph line, from Paddington to Slough

Oct 1: News of the World first published (closed in July 2011)

Ordnance Survey maps Epoch 1 – date range 1843-1893 (see 1891)

Skiing becomes a sport

Joule defines mathematical equivalent of heat (ergs/calorie)

Dickens A Christmas Carol

Wagner Flying Dutchman

Tennyson Morte d'Arthur

1844

Outdoor Relief Prohibition Order – parish relief received only in a workhouse

Companies Act in Britain – companies must register

Bank Charter Act, to regulate money supply in relation to gold in Britain

Railways Act – Gladstone's concept of the 'Parliamentary Train' brought rail travel to the masses

Factories Act 1844 – working hours of women and children restricted

May 24: First Morse message transmitted in the USA (Baltimore to Washington)

Jun 6: YMCA founded in London by Sir George Williams

Jun 15: Charles Goodyear receives a patent for the vulcanization of rubber

Karl Marx and Engels begin their collaboration

Dumas The Three Musketeers

Polka introduced to Britain

1845

Excise tax on glass production repealed

'The Hungry Forties': Potato famine in Ireland (to 1848) – generally accepted that 1 million people died and a further 1 million people had to emigrate during this period, leading to a population decline of around 20 to 25%

Temporary repeal of the Corn Laws

Mar 17: The rubber band patented by Stephen Perry

May 20: Franklin sets sail from London trying to find the Northwest passage

Kelly's Directories

Tarmac laid for first time (in Nottingham)

First voyage of 'Great Britain' – to America

Royal Naval Biographical Dictionary published

1846

May 17: The saxophone is patented by Adolphe Sax

Sep 10: The sewing machine is patented by Elias Howe

Edward Lear First Book of Nonsense

1847

Jan: An anaesthetic used for the first time in England (James Simpson used ether to numb the pain of labour)

United Succession becomes the United Presbyterian Church

Ten Hours Act shortens factory work day to ten hours for women and children

European crop failure

US Mormons make Salt Lake City their centre

Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre

1848

Jan 24: Gold found at Sutter's Mill, California – starts the California gold rush

Jan 29: Greenwich Mean Time adopted in Scotland

Jul 11: Waterloo railway station in London opens

General revolutionary movement throughout the European Continent ('Year of Revolution')

Rotary press first introduced

First Public Health Act, establishes the Board of Health

Third Chartist Petition: mass arrests and failure of the movement

Lord Kelvin determines the temperature of absolute zero

First commercial production of chewing gum

Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto

JS Mill Principles of Political Economy

Macaulay History of England

1849

Jan 31: Corn Laws abolished in UK (introduced by the Importation Act 1815, amended at various times and repealed by the Importation Act 1846)

Apr 10: Safety pin patented by American inventor Walter Hunt

Civil Registration of Births in Isle of Man started

Florin (2 shilling coin) introduced as the first step to decimalisation – which finally occurred in 1971!

Dickens David Copperfield

1850

Mar 18: American Express founded by Henry Wells & William Fargo

Sep 29: Catholic hierarchy restored on a regular pattern to England and Wales

Nov 19: Tennyson succeeds Wordsworth as Poet Laureate (and holds the position until his death in 1892)

Dec 16: First immigrant ships arrived in New Zealand

Telegraph cable Dover to Calais [others say 1851]

Britain has 39.5% of world merchant shipping tonnage

Bunsen burner designed

1851

Mar 30: Second full British Census – improvements in data compared with the first

May 1: Great exhibition of the works of industry of all nations ("Crystal Palace" exhibition) opened in Hyde Park

Aug 22: First "America's Cup" (round the Isle of Wight) won by the yacht America (after which the trophy was subsequently named)

Window Tax replaced by House Duty

Photography is popularised by introduction of "wet collodion" process

Isaac Singer produces first practical sewing machine (in USA)

Gold discovered in Australia

Verdi Rigoletto; Herman Melville Moby-Dick

1852

Feb 15: Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient

May: Victoria and Albert Museum, first known as The Museum of Manufactures, opens at Marlborough House – transfers in September to Somerset House, then to South Kensington in 1857

Manchester has its first Free Library

Land Survey of Britain completed

First voyage of 'Great Britain' to Australia

Tasmania ceases to be a convict settlement

US Express Co., Wells Fargo established in USA

Roget's Thesaurus

1853

Gladstone's first budget: wide range of duties abolished, and death duties introduced

Vaccination against smallpox made compulsory in Britain

Reuters founded

Potato chips first prepared?

1854

Mar 27: Britain declares war on Russia (Crimean War)

Jun: First Victoria Cross won during bombardment of Bomarsund in the Aland Islands

Sep 14: Allied armies land in Crimea

Sep 20: Battle of Alma: British and French troops defeat Russians in the Crimea

Oct 25: Battle of Balaklava in Crimea (charge of the Light Brigade)

Cigarettes introduced into Britain

The Times offers £1,000 for the discovery of an alternative raw material for paper (other than cotton and linen rags) – wood not used in paper manufacture until 1880s

1855

Jan 1: Registration of births, marriages & deaths made compulsory in Scotland

First London pillar boxes

Stamp Duty abolished on newspapers ('tax on knowledge') – many regional newspapers founded from this year onwards

Daily Telegraph founded, price 2d

London sewers modernised after fourth major outbreak of cholera

Florence Nightingale introduces hygiene into military hospitals in Crimea

Cellulose nitrate, first synthetic plastic material, invented by Alexander Parkes

Nov 17: Livingstone finds the Victoria Falls

Trollope The Warden

Longfellow The Song of Hiawatha

1856

Jan 29: Victoria Cross created by Royal Warrant, backdated to 1854 to recognise acts during the Crimean War (first award ceremony 26 June 1857)

Mar 30: Treaty of Paris signed, ending the Crimean War

Start of Second Opium War (to 1860)

Discovery of Neanderthal skull

Bessemer's converter revolutionises steel industry

Hughes Tom Brown's Schooldays

1857

Transatlantic cable starts to be laid (see 1866)

Oct 24: Sheffield FC founded – claim to be the world's first football team

London postal districts introduced

European financial crisis – also in America

Dec 31: Ottawa declared capital of Canada

'Golden age of crinolines' was 1857-1866 'by which point they were largely abandoned' [Bill Bryson At Home]

1857–8

Indian Mutiny (unrest started March 1857 – peace treaty signed 8 July 1858)

1858

Jan: Legally proved Wills start to be entered into an index (Eng & W) – taken out of ecclesiastical jurisdiction

Jan 31: 'Great Eastern' launched

Feb 11: First of 18 apparitions of "a Lady" to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes

Jul 25: HH Stephenson awarded a cap for taking three wickets in succession at a cricket match in Sheffield (start of the term 'hat-trick'?)
East India Company dissolved

Summer: 'The great stink' – smell of the River Thames forced Parliament to stop work

Royal Opera House opens in Covent Garden, London

Offenbach Orpheus in the Underworld

1859

Peaceful picketing legalised in Britain

Apr 25: Work started on building the Suez canal (opened 17 Nov 1869)

May 4: Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge opened at Saltash giving rail link between Devon and Cornwall

Jun 30: Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope

Aug: Beecham's Powders advertised as "Worth a guinea a box"
Sep 1: Biggest solar flare ever recorded witnessed by English astronomer Richard Carrington – an intense magnetic storm hit the Earth 18 hours later

Nov 24: Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species

First American oil well drilled (in Titusville, Pennsylvania)

Dickens A Tale of Two Cities

1860

Garibaldi's 'Red Shirts' conquer Sicily and Naples

Second Maori War in New Zealand (to 1870)

Aug 29: First tram service in Europe starts in Birkenhead

Sep: Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) visits United States

Oct 17: The Open Championship (golf) begins

Oct 18: Convention of Peking ends the Second Opium War

Linoleum patented in England by Frederick Walton (some say in Dec 1863)

Royal Navy adopts ironclads

1861

Feb 21: Spire of Chichester Cathedral collapses – rebuilt, a few feet taller, and completed in five years

May 25: American Civil War begins

Apr 7: Third full British Census

Dec 14: Prince Albert dies

First horse-drawn trams in London

Tax on newsprint abolished

Emancipation of serfs in Russia

Populations: Russia 76M, USA 32M, Italy 25M , Britain 23M

Mrs Beeton Book of Household Management

1862

Jan 30: USS Monitor launched, first ironclad warship commissioned by the United States Navy

Mar 9: Battle of Hampton Roads, Virginia; first-ever naval battle between two ironclad warships – USS Monitor and CSS Virginia

Apr 20: First pasteurisation test completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard

Nov 4: Richard Gatling patents his machine gun

Dec 31: USS Monitor, one of the first ironclad warships, sank under tow in a gale

Lincoln issues first legal US paper money (Greenbacks)

Bismark becomes first minister in Prussia

Foucault measures the speed of light

Victor Hugo Les Miserables

1863

Football Association founded

Jan 10: First section of the London Underground Railway opens, between Paddington and Farringdon Street

Opening of state institution for criminally insane at Broadmoor, England

Jul 3: Battle of Gettysburg

Manufacture (by Wilbrand) of TNT

Kingsley The Water Babies

1864

Civil Registration in Ireland starts

Civil Registration of marriages in Isle of Man starts

Mar 11: The Great Sheffield Flood – over 250 died when a new dam broke while it was being filled for the first time

Aug 22: Red Cross established – Twelve nations sign the First Geneva Convention

Dec 8: Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon officially opened

A man-powered submarine "Hunley" and sank a Federal steam ship, USS Housatonic, at the entrance to Charleston harbour in 1864 – the first recorded successful attack by a submarine on a surface ship [Les Moore]

1865

Apr 14: End of American Civil War – slavery abolished in USA; Abraham Lincoln assassinated in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth [do these two events really come together on this day??]

May 17: The International Telegraph Union established

Rockefeller forms Standard Oil (ESSO) in Ohio (some say 1870)

Jul 5: William Booth (1829-1912) founds Salvation Army, in London

Jul 14: First ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper and party, four of whom died on the descent

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) becomes first woman doctor in England [she later became the first woman mayor in England, in Aldeburgh 1908]

First concrete roads built in Britain

Locomotive Act (the 'Red Flag' Act) – required all road locomotives to travel at a maximum of 4 mph in the country and 2 mph in towns and have a crew of three, one of whom should carry a red flag walking 60 yards ahead of each vehicle (repealed 1896)

Mendel states his law of heredity

Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland

Tolstoy War and Peace

1866

May 11: London bank Overend, Gurney and Company collapses, precipitating a financial crisis
Jul 28: Atlantic cable first used – five attempts had been made over a nine year period (in 1857, two in 1858, 1865, and 1866) before lasting connections finally achieved by the SS Great Eastern with the 1866 cable and the repaired 1865 cable

Oct 16: Girton College founded

Marquis of Queensbury rules accepted for boxing

Winchester repeating rifle comes into use in USA

1867

Mar 30: USA buys Alaska from Russia ("Seward's Folly") – formal transfer on 18 Oct

July 1: The British North America Act takes effect, creating the Canadian Confederation

Aug 24: Fanny Adams murdered in Alton (leading to the term 'sweet FA'?)

Nov 25: Alfred Nobel patents dynamite

Dec 2: Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the USA (in New York)

The Second Reform Bill – vote given to town householders

Typewriter invented (but not commercially successful until 1873)

Lister uses carbolic antiseptic

Ibsen Peer Gynt

Strauss Blue Danube

1868

Last British election for which Poll Books available

Last convicts landed in Australia (Western Australia)

Impressionist movement begins to emerge in art

1869

Disestablishment of Irish Church

Imprisonment for debt abolished in Britain

May 10: Transcontinental railway completed in America

Nov 17: Suez Canal opens

Nov 23: Cutty Sark launched in Dumbarton

HJ Heinz Company founded in USA, with its '57 Varieties'

Ballbearings, celluloid, margarine, washing machine all invented

1870

GPO takes over the privately-owned Telegraph Companies (nationalised)

Jun 1: Telegraph link to India first open for business

Sep: Unification of Italy completed

Oct 1: First British postcard – halfpenny post
Elementary education act

– compulsory schooling (so more likely to find school records)

Board Schools start attempting to impose consistent spelling (Forster's Act?)

Dr Thomas Barnardo opens his first home for destitute children

Water closets come into wide use

Diamonds discovered in Kimberley, South Africa (some say 1866)

Britain possesses 43% of world's merchant steam tonnage

1870-1900

Art & Crafts Period (Art & Antiques)

1871

Mar 27: First Rugby Football international, England v Scotland, played in Edinburgh

Mar 29: Opening of Royal Albert Hall

Apr 2: Fourth full British census

Jun 16: University Tests Act allows students to enter Oxford, Cambridge and Durham universities without religious tests

Jun 29: Trades Unions legalised in Britain, but picketing made illegal

Bank Holidays Act

(see 1971)

Commissions in British armed forces no longer to be purchased

FA Cup introduced

Nov 10: Henry Morton Stanley finds Dr David Livingstone in Africa (in Ujiji near Lake Tanganyika)

Gilbert and Sullivan begin a 20 year collaboration

Verdi Aida

1872

Mar 16: First FA Cup – Wanderers FC beat Royal Engineers AFC 1-0 at the Oval

Jul 18: Secret Ballot introduced in Britain (no further Poll Books produced)

Nov 30: First international football match, at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow between Scotland and England – nil-all draw

Dec 4: American ship Mary Celeste is found abandoned by the British brig Dei Gratia in the Atlantic Ocean – the ship was unmanned but under full sail – she was recovered and used again for another 12 years or so

Licensing hours introduced

Penalties introduced for failing to register births, marriages & deaths (Eng & Wales)

Penny-farthing bicycles in general use

Over 32,000 friendly societies in England

1873

Mar 1: Remington & Sons start to manufacture the new Scholes and Glidden typewriter (named Remington from 1876)

Glidden invents barbed wire

Jules Verne Around the World in 80 Days

1874

Disraeli and the Tories come to power in Britain – pass 11 major Acts of social reform in next 2 years

First Trades Union MP is elected

Factory Act introduces 56-hour week

Apr 5: Birkenhead Park opened, said to be the first civic public park in the world – features of it later copied in Central Park, New York

Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd

Verdi Requiem

1875

Jan 1: Midland Railway abolishes Second Class passenger facilities, leaving First Class and Third Class. Other British railway companies followed during the rest of the year. (Third Class was renamed Second Class in 1956)

London's main sewage system completed

Aug 24: Captain Matthew Webb becomes first person to swim the English Channel (taking 21 hours 45 mins)

Artisan's Dwellings Act

Climbing Boys Act passed

Peaceful picketing permitted again

Universal Postal Union established at Geneva

Britain takes 42% share in Suez Canal

Bizet Carmen

1876

Feb 14: Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray each file a patent for the telephone – Bell awarded the rights

Feb 18: Direct telegraph link established between UK and New Zealand

Annual centralised list of Scottish Wills from now (and most from 1823 also)

Civil Registration of deaths in Isle of Man started

Plimsoll Line established for loading of ships

Dewey decimal classification for publishers introduced by Melvil Dewey

May 1: Victoria proclaimed Empress of India

Jun 25: Battle of Little Big Horn – Custer's last stand; last major North American Indian victory

Tchaikovsky Swan Lake

1877

Mar 15: First cricket Test Match begins (between Australia and England in Melbourne) – Australia won by 45 runs

First tennis championships at Wimbledon

Edison invents microphone and phonograph – demonstrated first sound recording on 6th Dec

Schiaperelli observes 'canals' on Mars

1878

Feb 11: First weekly weather forecast published by the Meteorological Office

Edison & Swan invent electric lamp

Red Flag Act in Britain limits mechanical road vehicles to 4mph (see 1896)

CID established at New Scotland Yard

Gilbert and Sullivan HMS Pinafore

1879

Jan 11: Start of Anglo-Zulu war

Jan 22: Battle of Rorke's Drift in the Anglo-Zulu Warr

Feb 27: Discovery of Saccharin announced (Fahlberg and Remsen)
Jun 1: First Tay Bridge completed (Thomas Bouch)

Sep 18: Blackpool illuminations switched on for first time

Dec 28 (Sunday): Tay Bridge Disaster – bridge collapsed in storm taking train with it – enquiry revealed corners had been cut during construction to reduce costs – replacement bridge constructed in 1887

First telephone exchanges opened in London & Manchester

Church of Christ Scientist established at Boston

Ibsen Doll's House

1880

Jan 15: First telephone directory issued in London (details of 248 personal and business names, but no telephone numbers) – see 2024

Education Act: schooling compulsory for 5-10 year olds

The Burial Laws Amendment Act, 1880, Section 13 – To be buried under this Act normally means that the person buried was a non-conformist; the burial service was performed by a Non-Conformist minister, but in a Church of England church, as the burial was going to take place in the churchyard. Before that time, non-conformists could not be buried in parish churchyards.

Aug 2: Greenwich Mean Time adopted throughout UK

Britain possesses half world's merchant steam tonnage

Mosquito found to be the carrier of malaria

Rodin The Thinker

1881

Apr 3: Fifth full British Census

Sep: Godalming in Surrey became the first town in England to have a public electricity supply installed (but in 1884 it reverted to gas lighting until 1904)

Postal Orders introduced

First Boer War – Transvaal independence recognised

Flogging abolished in Army and Royal Navy

Oct 26: Gunfight at OK Corral

1882

May 6: Phoenix Park murders in Dublin

Aug 29: Australia defeat England by seven runs in a Test match at The Oval – Institution of 'the Ashes' in cricket

Standard Oil Co controls 95% of US oil refining capacity

Fourth Eddystone Lighthouse completed

TB bacillus discovered by Koch

Conan Doyle A Study in Scarlet, first appearance of Sherlock Holmes

Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture

1883

May 24: Brooklyn Bridge, New York opens (crosses East River)

Aug 1: Parcel post starts in Britain

Oct 4: Foundation of the Boys' Brigade in Glasgow by William Smith

Foundation of the Primrose League, British Conservative organisation, by Lord Randolph Churchill

Married Women's Property Act of 1882 becomes law

Ekman opens a wood pulp mill in England, for manufacture of paper (he had opened one in Sweden in 1874)

Aug 27: Eruption of Krakatoa near Java – 30,000 killed by tidal wave

Statue of Liberty presented to USA by France

Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island

1884

Jan 29: Appearance of the first 'fascicle' [from 'A' to 'ant'] ofOxford English Dictionary (full Dictionary not completed until 1928)

The Third Reform Bill – vote given to agricultural workers

May 31: John Harvey Kellogg patents corn flakes

Sep 22: Herman Hollerith patents his mechanical tabulating machine

Oct 13: Standard Meridian Conference – Greenwich made prime meridian of the world

Oct 14: George Eastman patents the first film in roll form to prove practicable; in 1888 he perfected the Kodak camera

Bateman's Great Landowners published (relates to land values in 1882)

Fabergé produces the first of his jewelled Easter eggs for the Tsar

1884-1918

Art Noveau Period (Art & Antiques)

1885

Jan 26: Fall of Khartoum, General Gordon killed

Mar: First UK cremation in modern times took place at Woking (see 1902)

Mar 14: First performance of The Mikado

Jun 17: The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbour (in 350 pieces on board the French frigate Isère)

Sep 5: The first train runs through the Severn Tunnel

Aug 29: Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle

Sep 29: First electric tramcar used at Blackpool (some say first in Britain ran March 1882 in East London)

Carl Benz builds the 'Motorwagen', a single-cylinder motor car

Secretary for Scotland appointed

Canadian Pacific Railway completed

Twain Huckleberry Finn

1886

Gladstone's first Irish Home Rule Bill rejected, despite his famous three-hour speech

Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act – created legal definitions of crofting parish and crofter, granted security of tenure to crofters and produced the first Crofters Commission

Jan 9: Severn Rail Tunnel opened, but full service only started in December – longest mainline railway tunnel within the UK until 2007

Jan 18: The Hockey Association formed in England

Jan 20: Mersey railway (under Mersey) opened by Prince of Wales

May: Pharmacist John Styth Pemberton invents a carbonated beverage later named "Coca-Cola"

May 29: Putney Bridge opens in London

Sep 9: Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works finalised

Oct: The word Tuxedo first used for a type of jacket
Hardy The Mayor of Casterbridge

Millais Bubbles

1887

May 9: Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show opens in London

Jun 8: Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his punch card calculator

Jun 21: Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee

Jul 13: Second Tay Bridge opened

Jul 26: The Unua Libro (First Book) was published describing the international language Esperanto

Daimler produces a four-wheeled motor car

Kipling Plain Tales

Haggard She

1888

Mar 2: Convention of Constantinople guarantees free maritime passage through Suez Canal in war and peace

Mar 22: English Football League formed

Jack the Ripper active in east London during the latter half of the year

County Councils set up in Britain

Dunlop invents pneumatic tyre

First box camera – George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak, and receives a patent for his camera which uses roll film

First successful adding machine patented by William Seward Burroughs in the USA

Dec 23: Vincent van Gogh cuts off the lower part of his left ear

First known recording of classical music – Handel's Israel in Egypt on wax cylinder

Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherezade

Van Gogh Sunflowers

1889

Mar 31: Eiffel Tower completed (to mark centenary of French Revolution)

May 14: Children's charity NSPCC launched in London

Jun 3: Canadian Pacific Railway completed from coast to coast

Jul 8: First issue of the Wall Street Journal published

Aug 14: London Dock Strike – docker's won their "Docker's Tanner", 6 old pennies

Sep 28: Length of a metre defined

Oct 6: Moulin Rouge cabaret opens in Paris

Celluloid film produced

Gilbert & Sullivan Gondoliers; Jerome K Jerome Three Men in a Boat

1890

Jan 25: Nellie Bly returns to New York having gone round the world in 72 days using steamships and existing railroad systems

Mar 4: Forth railway bridge opens – took six years to build

Nov 4: City & South London Railway opens – London's first deep-level tube railway and first major railway in the world to use electric traction

1891

Mar 18: First telephone link between London & Paris

Apr 5: Sixth full British Census

Primary education made free and compulsory

May 4: Fictional date when Sherlock Holmes throws Moriarty over Reichenbach Falls, then disappears for 3 years! (published in 1893)

Ordnance Survey maps Epoch 2 – date range 1891-1912 (see 1904)

Aug 24: Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera

1892

Jan 1: Ellis Island immigration station opens in New York (closed in 1954)

Electric oven invented

Shop Hours Act – limit 74 hours per week for under-18s

May 20: Last broad-gauge train leaves Paddington for Plymouth

Oct 6: Alfred Lord Tennyson dies, aged 83, at his house Aldworth, near Haslemere

Oct 31: Arthur Conan Doyle publishes the first Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Dec 18: First performance of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet (in St Petersburg)

1893

Keir Hardy founds Independent Labour Party

Henry Ford's first car

Feb 4: Official opening of Liverpool Overhead Railway by Marquis of Salisbury

Jun 7: Gandhi's first act of civil disobedience (in South Africa)
Oct 1893–Jan 1894: First Matabele War

Tchaikovsky 6th symphony (Pathétique), and suicide

1894

Jan 1: Manchester Ship Canal opens

Local Government Act passed (start of civil parish councils, etc)

Picture postcard introduced in Britain

Mar 1: Blackpool Tower opens

May 21: Queen Victoria opens Manchester Ship Canal

Jun 23: International Olympic Committee founded at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin

Jun 30: Tower Bridge first opens

Aug 2: Death duties first introduced in Britain

Dec 22: Alfred Dreyfus convicted of treason in France

Beatrice and Sidney Webb History of Trade Unionism

Kipling Jungle Book

Shaw Arms and the Man

Debussy L'Apres-midi d'un Faune

1895

Jan 12: The National Trust founded in England

London School of Economics (LSE) established

Mar 22: First public showing of film on screen in Paris by Lumières

Gugliemo Marconi invents wireless telegraphy – message over a mile

Safety razor invented by King C Gillette

Jul 12: First recorded motor journey of any length (56 miles) in Britain

Oct 17: First people in Britain to be charged with motor offences – John Henry Knight and James Pullinger of Farnham, Surrey

May 24: Henry Irving becomes the first person from the theatre to be knighted

May 28: Oscar Wilde sent to prison

Nov: Röntgen discovers X-rays

Sir Henry Wood starts Promenade Concerts in London

HG Wells The Time Machine

Chekov The Seagull

1896

Mar 31: Zip fastener patented by Whitcomb L Judson
Mar 1896–Oct 1897: Second Matabele War

Apr 6–15: First modern Olympic Games held in Athens

May 4: Daily Mail first published

Jun 2: Guglielmo Marconi receives a British patent (later disputed) for the radio

Aug: Start of Klondyke Gold Rush in the Yukon

Repeal of the 1878 Red Flag Act – removed the need for a crew of three, and increased the speed limit to 14 mph (first London to Brighton run on14 Nov in celebration, now an annual event)

Dec 14: Opening of the Underground Railway (the "shooglie") in Glasgow – remains the only underground in Scotland

Term psychoanalysis first comes into use

Puccini La Boheme

Richard Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra

1897

Jun 22: Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee

Flora Thompson leaves 'Candleford Green'

Oct: Arthur Conan Doyle and family move into Undershaw at Hindhead – it had cost him just over £6,000 to build – they threw a big fancy-dress party at Christmas to celebrate, with 160 guests (including Jean Leckie who later became his second wife)

Workmen's Compensation Act: employers liable for insurance of workforce

Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector

Bram StokerDracula

1898

First photograph using artificial light

Mar 17: USS Holland launched, the first practical submarine

Jun 27: The first solo circumnavigation of the globe completed at Rhode island by Joshua Slocum in Spray (started from Boston, Mass on Apr 24, 1895)

Zeppelin builds airship

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company founded

The Curies discover Radium

Oscar Wilde The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Henry James The Turn of the Screw

1899-1902

Second Boer War

1899

Oct 11: Start of Second Boer War

Nov 15: Winston Churchill captured by Boers

Board of Education established in Britain

Britain's first 'Garden City' laid out at Letchworth

Valdemar Poulsen invents the tape recorder

Johann Vaaler designs the paper clip

Mar 6: Aspirin first marketed by Bayer

Elgar Enigma Variations; Sibelius Finlandia

Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams

1900

Jan 24: Spion Kop reached by British; massive losses by Lancashire Regiment

Feb 9: Davis Cup tennis competition established

Feb 27: Labour Party formed

Feb 28: Relief of Ladysmith after a siege of 118 days

May 17: Relief of Mafeking

June/July: Boxer rising in Peking

School leaving age in Britain raised to 14 years

Central Line opens in London: underground is electrified

Dec 10: Nobel prizes first awarded

Dec 14: Max Planck publishes his book on Quantum Mechanics

Escalator shown at Paris exhibition

1901

Commonwealth of Australia founded

Jan 22: Queen Victoria dies – Edward VII king

Feb 2: Queen Victoria's funeral – interred beside Prince Albert in the Frogmore Mausoleum at Windsor Great Park.

Mar 31: Seventh full British Census (available for inspection Jan 2002)

June: Denunciation of use of concentration camps by British in Boer War

Aug 30: Hubert Cecil Booth patents the vacuum cleaner

Oct 2: Britain's first submarine launched

Dec 12: First successful radio transmission across the Atlantic, by Marconi – Morse code from Cornwall to Newfoundland

Ragtime introduced into American jazz

Trans-Siberian Railway opens

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No.2

Kipling Kim

1902

Balfour's Education Act provides for secondary education

Cremation Act – cremation can only take place at officially recognised establishments, and with two death certificates issued

May 24: Empire Day (later Commonwealth Day) first celebrated

May 31: Treaty of Vereeniging ends Second Boer War

Aug 9: Coronation of Edward VII, following the end of the Boer War

Oct 24: Arthur Conan Doyle reluctantly accepts a knighthood

Marie Curie discovers radioactivity

USA acquires perpetual control of Panama Canal (not yet completed, see 1913)

Discovery by physicist Heaviside of atmospheric layer which aids conduction of radio waves

Times Literary Supplement appears for first time

1903

Workers' Education Association (WEA) formed in Britain

Women's Social and Political Union formed in Britain by Emmeline Pankhurst

Jul 19: First Tour de France cycle race finishes

Dec 14: First flight of Wilbur & Orville Wright (some say 17th Dec)

Henry Ford sets up his motor company

Bertrand Russell Principles of Mathematics

Shaw Man and Superman

Chekov The Cherry Orchard

1904

Leeds University established

Apr 8: France and UK sign the Entente Cordiale

May 4: America takes over construction of the Panama Canal from the French (completed 1914)

Jul 16: 'Bloomsday' in Dublin – the day James Joyce uses for his novel Ulysses

Dec: Metropolitan Line in London goes electric

First successful caterpillar track is made

Ordnance Survey maps Epoch 3 – date range 1904-1939 (see 1919)

Barrie Peter Pan (legend says he invented the name Wendy for this, but the name exists in census records as early as 1880)

Puccini Madame Butterfly

1905

The title 'Prime Minister' noted in a royal warrant for the first time – placed the Prime Minister in order of precedence in Britain immediately after the Archbishop of York

Aliens Act in Britain: Home Office controls immigration

Germany lays down the first Dreadnought battleship

Apr 11: Einstein publishes Special Theory of Relativity (see 1916)

Nov 28: Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin

Dec 5: Part of the roof of Charing Cross station in London collapsed, killing 5 people – the station remained closed until 19 March 1906

Dec 9: French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State

Picasso begins his 'Pink Period' in Paris

Lehar The Merry Widow

Debussy La Mer

1906

Free school meals for poor children

Feb 10: Launching of HMS Dreadnought, first turbine-driven battleship

Mar 15: Rolls-Royce Ltd registered

Apr 18: San Francisco earthquake and fire: Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people lost their lives, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands. More than half the city's population of 400,000 were left homeless

May 26: Vauxhall Bridge opened in London

Sep 12: Newport transporter bridge opened

Sep 20: Launching of Cunard's RMS Mauretania on the Tyne

Dec 15: Opening of the Piccadilly Line in London

Freud and Jung begin their association

Amundsen traverses the north-west passage

HW Fowler The King's English

1907

School medical system begins

New Zealand becomes a Dominion

Jan 7: Selborne Memorandum, reviewing the situation in favour of a Union in South Africa (see 1910)

Imperial College, London, is established

First airship flies over London

Jul: Leo Hendrik Baekeland patents Bakelite, the first plastic invented that held its shape after being heated

Aug 1-9: Baden-Powell leads the first Scout camp on Brownsea Island

Nov 9: The Cullinan Diamond presented to Edward VII on his birthday

Pavlov begins his studies on conditioned reflexes

Lumiere develops a process for colour photography

Diaghilev begins to popularise ballet

First 'Cubist' exhibition in Paris

Mahler Symphony No.8

1908

Coal Mines Regulation Act in Britain limits men to an eight hour day

Separate courts for juveniles established in Britain

Lord Baden-Powell starts the Boy Scout movement

Jun 30: The Tunguska event occurs near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia – most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment

Jul1: SOS became effective as an international signal of distress (see 1909)

Aug 12: First 'Model T' Ford made

Grahame The Wind in the Willows

1909

Jan 1: Old Age Pensions Act came into force

Jan 16: Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole

Mar 15: Selfridges department store opens in London

Jul 25: Bleriot flies across the Channel (36 minutes, Calais to Dover)

Aug 11: First SOS signal sent (some say June 10 by Cunard liner Slavonia)

Beveridge Report prompts creation of labour Exchanges

Peary reaches the north pole

First commercial manufacture of Bakelite – start of the plastic age

1910

Constitutional crisis in Britain

Railway strike and coal strikes in Britain

May 6: Edward VII dies – George V king

May 31: Union of South Africa formed – Botha first Prime Minister

Dr Crippen caught by radio telegraphy; hanged 23 Nov at Pentonville

Madame Curie isolates radium

Halley's comet reappears

Tango becomes popular in North America and Europe

Stravinsky The Fire Bird

1911

Parliament Act in Britain reduces the power of the House of Lords

British MPs receive a salary

Feb 18: First official flight with air mail takes place in Allahabad, British India

Apr 2 Census: Pop. E&W 36M, Scot 4.6M, NI 1.25M

May 15: Standard Oil in USA broken up into 33 companies

Jun 22: Coronation of George V

Jul 19: Opening of Royal Liver Building in Liverpool

Dec 12: Delhi replaces Calcutta as the capital of India

Dec 14: National Insurance in Britain

Dec 14: Amundsen reaches the south pole

First British Official Secrets Act

Rutherford: theory of atomic structures

GK Chesterton The Innocence of Father Brown

Irving Berlin Alexander's Rag-time Band

1911-1912

Strikes by seamen, dock and transport workers

1912

Irish Home Rule crisis grows in Britain

Jan 18: Captain Scott's last expedition – he and his team reach the south pole on Jan 18th; all die on the way back, their bodies found in November; news reached London 10 Feb 1913

Mar 1: Albert Berry makes the first parachute jump from a moving airplane (in USA)

Apr 14: The 'unsinkable' Titanic sinks on maiden voyage – loss of 1,513 lives

May 13: Royal Flying Corps (later the RAF) founded in Britain

Britain nationalises the telephone system

Daily Herald founded – lasts until 1964

Discovery of the 'Piltdown Man' – hoax, exposed in 1953

1913

Jan 30: Third Irish Home Rule Bill rejected by House of Lords – threat of civil war in Ireland – formation of Ulster Volunteers to oppose Home Rule

Suffragette demonstrations in London – Apr 2: Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst sentenced to three years imprisonment

May 20: First Chelsea Flower Show held in London

Jun 4: Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of the king's horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby and dies

Trade Union Act in Britain establishes the right to use Union funds for political purposes

Aug: Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley of Sheffield

Oct 14: 439 miners die in the Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, Britain's worst pit disaster

Dec 21: Arthur Wynne's 'word-cross,' the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World

Geiger invents his counter to measure radioactivity

Stravinsky The Rite of Spring

DH Lawrence Sons and Lovers

Shaw Pygmalion

1914-1918

First World War (the "Great War")

1914

 

Mar: The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) published separately for the first time

Apr 11: First British performance of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion

Jun 28: Archduke Ferdinand assassinated in Sarajevo

Jul 14: The Government of Ireland Bill (Irish Home Rule Act) completes its passage through the House of Lords

Aug 4: Britain declares war on Germany, citing Belgian neutrality as reason

Aug 5: British cableship Alert cut through all five of Germany's undersea telegraph links to the outside world

Aug 6: Germany's Atlantic U-boat Campaign begins

Aug 10: All suffragette prisoners released unconditionally

Aug 12: Britain declares war on Austria-Hungary

Aug 15: Panama Canal opened, the Canal cement boat Ancon making the first official transit (plans for a grand opening were cancelled due to the start of WW1)

Sep 5: Drawing by Alfred Leete of Lord Kitchener with slogan 'Your Country Needs You' first published

Oct-Nov: Battle of Ypres – beginning of trench warfare on western front

Nov 27: First policewoman goes on duty in Britain

Dec 16: German battleships bombard Hartlepool and Scarborough

Irish Home Rule Act provides for a separate Parliament in Ireland; the position of Ulster to be decided after the War

James Joyce The Dubliners

Chaplin and De Mille make their first films

Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes

Vaughan Williams London Symphony

1915

Jan 19: First Zeppelin air raid on England, over East Anglia – four killed

Feb: Submarine blockade of Britain starts

Apr-May: Second Battle of Ypres – poison gas used for first time

Apr 25: Gallipoli campaign starts (declared ANZAC Day in 1916)

May 7: RMS Lusitania sunk by German submarine off coast of Ireland – 1,198 died

May 16: First meeting of a British WI (Women's Institute) took place in Llanfairpwll (aka Llanfair PG), Anglesey

Junkers construct first fighter aeroplane

Coalition Government formed in Britain under Asquith

First automatic telephone exchange in Britain

Buchan The Thirty-nine Steps

1916

Feb-Dec: Battle of Verdun – appalling losses on both sides, stalemate continues

Apr 24: Easter Rising in Ireland – after the leaders are executed, public opinion backs independence

May 21: First use of Daylight Saving Time in UK (although Sir Ernest Shackleton, on Endurance ice-bound in the Weddell Sea, advanced the expedition's time by one hour on Sunday 26th Sep 1915)

May 31-Jun 1: Battle of Jutland – only major naval battle between the British and German fleets

Jun 5: Sinking of HMS Hampshire and death of Kitchener

Sep 15: First use of tanks in battle, but of limited effect (Battle of the Somme 1 July–18 Nov: over 1 million casualties)

Aug 3: Sir Roger Casement hanged at Pentonville Prison for treason

Nov 19: Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures

Dec 7: Lloyd-George becomes British Prime Minister of the coalition

Compulsory military service introduced in Britain

Einstein General Theory of Relativity

Kafka Metamorphosis

Holst The Planets

Jazz sweeps through America

1917

February revolution in Russia; Tsar Nicholas abdicates

USA declares war on Germany

Battle of Cambrai – first use of massed tanks, but effect more psychological than actual

Apr 16: Lenin returns to Russia after exile

Apr 17: USA declares war on Germany

May 26: George V changes surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor (Royal proclamation on 17 July)

Jul-Nov: Battle of Passchendaele – little gained by either side

Oct 17: Trans-Australian railway line completed

Nov 2: Balfour Declaration: Britain will support a Jewish state in Palestine

Nov 7: 'October' Revolution in Russia – Bolsheviks overthrow provisional government; Lenin becomes Chief Commissar

Dec 6: Halifax (Nova Scotia) Explosion, one of the world's largest artificial non-nuclear explosions to date: a ship loaded with wartime explosives blew up after a collision, obliterating buildings and structures within two square kilometres of the explosion

Dec 9: British forces capture Jerusalem

Ministry of Labour is established in Britain

Daniel Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary

1918

Mar 8: Start of world-wide 'flu pandemic

Apr 1: Royal Air Force replaces The Royal Flying Corps

Jul-Aug: Second Battle of the Marne: last major German offensive

Oct 1: Arab forces under Lawrence of Arabia capture Damascus

Nov 11: Armistice signed

Vote for women over 30, men over 21 (except peers, lunatics and felons)

Dec: First woman elected to House of Commons, Countess Markiewicz as a Sinn Féin member refused to take her seat

War of Independence in Ireland

1918-1939

Art Deco Period (Art & Antiques)

1919

Britain adopts a 48-hour working week

Irish MPs meet as Dail Eirann

Jan 18: Bentley Motors founded

Jun 15: Alcock and Brown complete first nonstop flight across the Atlantic

Jun 28: Treaty of Versailles signed

Nov 28: First woman to sit in House of Commons (Viscountess Astor)

Sir Ernest Rutherford became the first person to transmute one element into another when he converted nitrogen into oxygen through nuclear reaction

Ordnance Survey maps Epoch 4 – date range 1919-1943 (see 1945)

Keynes The Economic Consequencies of War

Sassoon War Poems

HL Mencken The American Language

1920

Jan 16: Prohibition starts in USA (lasts until Dec 1933)

Feb: First roadside petrol filling station in UK – opened by the Automobile Association at Aldermaston on the Bath Road

Nov 8: Rupert Bear first appeared in the Daily Express

Nov 15: First General Assembly of the League of Nations (in Geneva)

Regular cross-channel air service starts

Oxford University admits women to degrees

Marconi opens a radio broadcasting station in Britain

Thompson patents his machine gun (Tommy gun)

DH Lawrence Women in Love

1921

Jun 19 Census: Pop. E&W 37.9M, Scot 4.9M, NI 1.25M

Dec 6: Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in London, leading to the formation of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland

Irish Regiments of British Army disbanded

Railway Act in Britain amalgamates companies – only four remained

Insulin discovery announced

First birth control clinic

Chaplin The Kid, first full-length film

Prokofiev The Love for Three Oranges

1922

Fall of Lloyd-George coalition

Law of Property Act – the manorial system effectively ended

Jun 1: Royal Ulster Constabulary founded

Oct: BBC established as a monopoly, and begins transmissions in November (2LO in London on 14 Nov; 5IT in Birmingham and 2ZY in Manchester on 15 Nov)

Dec 6: Irish Free State comes into existence

Einstein General Theory of Relativity

TS Eliot The Waste Land

Joyce Ulysses published Feb 2 in Paris

1923

Jan 1: The majority of the railway companies in Great Britain grouped into four main companies, the Big Four: LNER, GWR, SR, LMSR – lasted until nationalisation in 1948

Feb 16: Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Tutankhamun

Mussolini becomes dictator of Italy

Apr 28: First Wembley cup final (West Ham 0, Bolton 2) – "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," popular song of the time, became the West Ham anthem

Jul 13: The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood

Sep 28: First publication of Radio Times

Nov: Massive inflation in Germany leads to collapse of the currency

Roads in Great Britain classified with A and B numbers

Hubble shows there are galaxies beyond the Milky Way

First American broadcasts heard in Britain

Dec 31: Chimes of Big Ben broadcast on radio for the first time

Freud The Ego and the Id

PG Wodehouse The Inimitable Jeeves

Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue

1924

Jan 4–Nov 4: First Labour government in Britain, headed by Ramsay MacDonald

Jan 21: Death of Lenin; succeeded by Stalin

Jan 22: Ramsay MacDonald becomes the first Labour Prime Minister

Feb 5: Hourly Greenwich Time Signals from the Royal Greenwich Observatory (the 'pips') were first broadcast by the BBC

Mar 31: British Imperial Airways begins operations (formed by merger of four British airline companies – became BOAC in 1940)

Forster A Passage to India

1925

Britain returns to gold standard

Jul 18: Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf

Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Noel Coward Hay Fever

Charleston dance becomes fashionable

1926

Apr 21: Princess Elizabeth born

May 3: General Strike begins, lasted until May 12 (mine workers for 6 months more)

Oct 31: Death of Harry Houdini

First public demonstration of television (TV) by John Logie Baird

Electricity (Supply) Act authorised the creation of the National Grid in the UK (Initial grid completed 1933, fully established in 1938)

 

Adoption of children is legalised in Britain

May 9: Richard E Byrd claims to make a flight over north pole, later disputed (see 1929)

Dec 28: Highest recorded cricket innings (1,107 runs by Victoria v NSW at Melbourne)

Kodak produces 16mm movie film

Walt Disney arrives in Hollywood

HW Fowler Dictionary of Modern English Usage

1927

Jan 7: First transatlantic telephone call – New York City to London

Jan 22: First live broadcast in the world on radio of a football match (by BBC – Arsenal v Sheffield United at Highbury)

May 9: Canberra becomes Federal Capital of Australia (Government moved in on this date; construction had begun in 1913)

May 1: First cooked meals on a scheduled flight introduced by Imperial Airways from London to Paris

May 20-21: Lindbergh makes solo flight across the Atlantic, in 33½ hours

May 31: Last Ford Model T rolls off assembly line

Jul 24: The Menin Gate war memorial unveiled at Ypres

Parts of the Diocese of Winchester split off to create the two new Diocese of Guildford and Portsmouth

Release of the first 'talkie' film (The Jazz Singer)

1928

Women over 21 get vote in Britain – same qualification for both sexes

Apr 19: The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published (see 1884)

Apr 26: Madame Tussauds opens in London

Teleprinters start to be used

Jul 14: First pylon erected for the National Grid

Sep 15: Sir Alexander Fleming accidentally discovers penicillin (results published 1929)

Nov 1: Turkey adopts Roman alphabet

Nov 18: Walt Disney's 'Mickey Mouse' pictures begin

Dec 20: First chip shop opened in Guiseley by Harry Ramsden – Britain's longest established restaurant chain

DH Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover

Ravel Bolero

Brecht and Weill The Threepenny Opera

1929

Abolition of Poor Law system in Britain

Minimum age for a marriage in Britain (which had been 14 for a boy and 12 for a girl) now 16 for both sexes, with parental consent (or a licence) needed for anyone under 21

Feb 14: Screen debut of Mickey Mouse – same day as St Valentine's Day massacre!

Oct 24: Wall Street crash on 'Black Thursday', followed on Oct 29 by 'Black Tuesday, regarded as the start of the Great Depression' – the Dow Jones Index didn't recover to its pre-crash level until 1954

BBC begins experimental TV transmissions

Nov 29: Richard E Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole

Einstein Unified Field Theory

Hemingway A Farewell to Arms

1930

Jan 31: 3M begins marketing Scotch Tape

Feb 1: The Times publishes its first crossword puzzle, compiled by Adrian Bell, aged 28

Mar 6: Clarence Birdseye first marketed frozen peas (Springfield, Mass)
Apr 18 (Good Friday): BBC News announced 'there is no news today'

First Nazis elected to the German Reichstag

Jul 30: Uruguay beats Argentina 4-2 to win the first Football World Cup

Oct 5: R101 airship disaster – British abandons airship construction

Youth Hostel Association (YHA) founded in Britain

Nov 13: Discovery of dwarf planet Pluto by Tombaugh

Film All Quiet on the Western Front

1931

Apr 14: Highway Code first issued

Apr 26 Census: Pop. E&W 40M, Scot 4.8M, NI 1.24M (but details destroyed by fire during WW2)

May 1: Empire State Building completed in New York

Statute of Westminster: British Dominions become independent sovereign states

Oct 21: National Government formed to deal with economic crisis – Britain comes off gold standard

Collapse of the German banking system; 3,000 banks there close

Unemployment in Germany reaches 5.66M

1932

Great Hunger March of unemployed to London

Moseley founds British Union of Fascists

Roosevelt elected President of USA

Slump grows worse in USA; 5,000 banks close, unemployment rises

Cockroft and Walton accelerate particles to disintegrate an atomic nucleus

Mar 19: Sydney Harbour Bridge opened

May 20/21: Amelia Earhart first solo nonstop flight across Atlantic by a female pilot

Jul 12: Lambeth Bridge in London opens

Oct 3: Iraq gains independence from Britain

Oct 3: The Times introduces Times New Roman typeface

Sir Thomas Beecham established the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Huxley Brave New World (see 1963)

1933

Jan 30: Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany

Roosevelt launches his 'New Deal'

Oxford Union: "This House will in no circumstances fight for King and Country"
Jul 1: London Transport came into being

Sep: Last pylon of the initial National Grid erected

Nov 12: First known photos of the 'Loch Ness Monster' taken

Dec 5: Prohibition ends in USA

ICI scientists discover polythene

Only 6 pennies minted in Britain this year

1934

Hitler becoms Fuehrer of Germany

Mao Tse-tung's 'Long March' starts in China
First 'two-day weekend' in the UK, when Jesse Boots decides to give workers extra time off (the Saturday) instead of making redundancies

Mar 26: Driving tests introduced in UK? (but see 1935)

Apr 4: 'Cats eyes' first used in the road in UK

May 28: The Glyndebourne festival inaugurated

Jun 9: Cartoon character Donald Duck first appears

Jul 18: King George V opens Mersey Tunnel

Sep 26: RMS Queen Mary launched

Nov 30: First time a steam locomotive goes at 100 mph ('Flying Scotsman')

Graves I, Claudius

Flying Down to Rio first Rogers/Astaire film

1935

Feb 28: Nylon first produced by Gerard J. Berchet of Wallace Carothers' research group at DuPont (there is no evidence to the widely-supposed story that the name derives from New York-London)

Mar 12: Hore-Belisha introduces pedestrian crossings and speed limits for built-up areas in Britain

London adopts a 'Green Belt' scheme

Jun 1: Voluntary driving tests introduced in UK (others say Mar 13, but see also 1934)

Jul 30: Penguin paperbacks launched

Sep 3: Land speed record of 301.13 mph by Malcolm Campbell on Bonneville Salt Flats

Oct 3: Italy invades Abyssinia

Dec 17: First flight of the Douglas DC-3 'Dakota' aircraft

Talking books started with the publication of Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Joseph Conrad's Typhoon

TS Eliot Murder in the Cathedral

1936

Jan 20: George V dies; Edward VIII king

May 5: First flight of a Spitfire

Jet engine first tested

May 27: RMS Queen Mary makes maiden voyage

Jesse Owens wins 4 gold medals at Berlin Olympic Games

Jul 18: Spanish Civil War starts

Jul 24: 'Speaking clock' service starts in UK

Oct: Jarrow march to London

Nov 2: British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, world's first public TV transmission

Nov 30: Crystal Palace destroyed by fire

Dec 5: Edward VIII abdicates (announced Dec 10) – popular carol that Christmas: "Hark the Herald Angels sing, Mrs Simpson's got our King"

Duke of York becomes George VI

Chaplin film Modern Times

Prokofiev Peter and the Wolf

1937

Apr 12: Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft

Apr 26: German planes bomb Guernica in Spain

Apr 27: Golden Gate Bridge opens in San Francisco

May 6: Zeppelin Hindenburg destroyed by fire in USA after lightning struck it at the landing tower

May 12: Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth

May 28: The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco officially opened

May 28: Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister – policy of appeasement towards Hitler

Jun 3: Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson

Jul 5: Spam introduced into the market by Hormel Foods Corporation

Jul 7: Japanese forces invade China

Dec 4: The Dandy first published

Dec 21: Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opens – first feature-length animated cartoon

Alan Turing publishes outline of his 'Turing Machine'

'999' emergency telephone call facility starts in London

Billy Butlin opens his first holiday camp

Steinbeck Of Mice and Men; JRR Tolkien The Hobbit

Carl Orff Carmina Burana

Picasso Guernica

1938

Mar 12: Germany invades and annexes Austria

Jul 3: 'Mallard' does 126 mph (203 km/h); still world record for a steam locomotive

Sep 27: Largest ocean liner ever built Queen Elizabeth launched on Clydebank

Sep 29: Chamberlain visits Hitler in Munich – promises 'peace in our time'

Oct 30: Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of HG Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing panic in the USA

Principle of paid holidays established in Britain

HMS Rodney first ship to be equipped with radar

First practical ball-point pen produced by Hungarian journalist, Lajos Biro

1939-45

Second World War (the "Peoples War")

1939

Germany annexes Czechoslovakia

Sep 1: Germany invades Poland

Sep 3: Britain and France declare war on Germany at 5pm

Sep 6: First air-raid on Britain

Sep 11: British Expeditionary Force (BEF) sent to France

Oct 14: HMS Royal Oak sunk in Scapa Flow with loss of 810 lives

Dec 7: 'First flight' of Canadian troops sail for Britain – 7,400 men on 5 ships

Dec 17: Admiral Graf Spee scuttled outside Montevideo

Start of evacuation of women and children from London

Coldest winter in Britain since 1894, though this could not be publicised at the time

1940

Apr 1:BOAC starts operations, replacing Imperial and British Airways Ltd

May 11: National Government formed under Churchill

May 13: Germany invades France

May 15: Nylon stockings go on sale for the first time in the United States

May 27-Jun 4: Evacuation of British Army at Dunkirk

Jun 25: Fall of France

Aug 21: Trotsky assassinated in Mexico on Stalin's orders

Sep 7: Germany launches bombing blitz on Britain, the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing

Sep 12: Prehistoric wall paintings found at Lascaux Caves in France

Sep 15: Battle of Britain: massive waves of German air attacks decisively repulsed by the RAF – Hitler postpones invasion of Britain

Nov 7: Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge collapses in USA four months after its completion (famously filmed)

Nov 14: Coventry heavily bombed and the Cathedral almost completely destroyed

First successful helicopter flight?? (probably earlier)

Films: Fantasia, The Great Dictator

Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls

1941

No census – total British population estimated at 48.2M

May 10: Rudolf Hess flies to Scotland (to offer peace?)

May 27: 'Bismark' sunk

June 22: Germany invades Russia (Operation Barbarossa)

July 1: First Canadian armoured regiments arrive in Britain

Sep 27: First Liberty ship (SS Patrick Henry) launched in Baltimore

Oct 31: Sculptures (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln) on Mount Rushmore completed – started in 1927

Sunday Dec 7: Japan attackes US fleet at Pearl Harbour

Dec 8: USA enters the War

Dec: Canadian forces given operation role in defending south coast of England

Dec 24: Hong Kong falls to the Japanese

Manhattan Project of nuclear research begins in America

Britain introduces severe rationing

First British jet aircraft flies, based on work of Whittle

Bailey invents his portable military bridge

First use of antibiotics

Film Citizen Kane

1942

May 30: Over 1,000 bombers raid Cologne

Jun 4: Battle of Midway

Aug 19: Abortive raid on Dieppe, largely by Canadian troops

Oct 3: First successful launch of V2 rocket in Germany – first man-made object to reach space

Oct 3: The world was blessed with me!

 

Oct 23-Nov 4: Battle of El Alamein – Montgomery defeats Rommel

Nov 19: Battle of Stalingrad – in Operation Uranus, Soviet Union forces turn the tide of the German invasion of the USSR

Dec 2: Manhattan Project – a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction

Invention of world's first programmable computer by Alan Turing in co-operation with Max Neumann – used to crack German codes

Beveridge Report Social Security and National Insurance

Gilbert Murray founds Oxfam

Film Bambi

1943

May 16: 'Dam Buster' raids on Ruhr dams by RAF

Allies invade Italy – Benito Mussolini resigns as Italian Dictator, 24 July

Round-the-clock bombing of Germany begins

Nov 30: Tehran Conference – Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin meet

Antibiotic Streptomycin isolated by Waksman

1944

Apr 6: PAYE income tax begins

Jun 4: Allies enter Rome

Jun 6: D-Day invasion of Normandy

Jun 12: First V1 flying bombs hit London

Sep 8: First V2 rocket bombs hit London

Sep 11: Allies enter Germany

Dec 16: Battle of the Bulge: German counter-offensive

Butler Education Act: Britain to provide secondary education for all children

1945

Feb 4: Yalta Conference between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin

Mar 29: Last V1 flying bomb attack

Apr 25: Berlin surrounded by Russian troops

Apr 30: Hitler commits suicide

May 8: VE Day

May 9: Channel Islands liberated

Jun 26: UN Charter signed, in San Francisco

Jul 16: First ever atomic bomb exploded in a test in New Mexico (although there were other forms of atomic device before that, such as the Pile at Stagg Field, first critical on 2nd Dec 1942)

Jul 26: Labour win UK General Election – Churchill out of office

Jul 29: BBC Light Programme starts

Aug 6: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

Aug 9: Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki

Aug 15: VJ Day

Sep 2: Japanese surrender was signed aboard USS Missouri

Oct 24: United Nations Organisation comes into existence (charter ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council – Republic of China, France, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States – and by a majority of the other 46 signatories)

Nov 4: UNESCO founded

Nov 29: The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia is declared

Dec 5: Loss of 'Flight 19' on a training exercise starts the Bermuda Triangle legend

Dec 27: World Bank established

Ordnance Survey maps Epoch 5 – dates range from 1945

Orwell Animal Farm

Britten Peter Grimes opera

Brecht The Caucasian Chalk Circle

Flora Thompson Lark Rise to Candleford

1946

Jan 1: First civil flight from Heathrow Airport

Mar 1: Bank of England nationalised

Mar 5: Churchill uses the term 'Iron Curtain' in a speech in Missouri

Transition to National Health Service starts in Britain (came into being 5th July 1948)

Jul 25: US starts nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll – hence the name adopted for the garment which 'reveals the most potent forces of nature'!

Sep: First Cannes Film Festival held

Oct 7: Start of Dick Barton, Special Agent on BBC radio – until March 1951

Oct 23: First session of new United Nations Organisation held, in Flushing Meadow, New York

Alistair Cooke starts his regularLetter from America on BBC radio – until 2004

Russell History of Western Philosophy

O'Neill The Iceman Cometh

1947

Most severe winter in Britain for 53 years at start of the year – heavy snow and much flooding later

Jan 1: Coal Mines nationalised

Feb 7: First Dead Sea Scrolls found (discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves)

Feb 23: International Organization for Standardization (ISO) founded

Mar 1: International Monetary Fund begins financial operations

Apr 1: School leaving age raised to 15 in Britain

Aug 14/15: India gains independence: sub-continent partitioned to form India (Secular, Hindu majority) and Pakistan (Islamic)

First British nuclear reactor developed

Oct 14: Chuck Yeager first to break the sound barrier

Oct 26: British military occupation ends in Iraq

Nov 20: Marriage of Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth II) and Philip Mountbatten in Westminster Abbey

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

1948

Jan 1: British Railways nationalised

UN sanctions the creation of the State of Israel – first Israel/Arab war

Jan 30: Gandhi assassinated in Delhi

Apr 3: Marshall Plan signed by President Truman for rebuilding the allied countries of Europe (aid had started in 1947 and ended in 1951)

Policy of apartheid starts in South Africa

Jul 1: Berlin airlift starts (to 30 Sep 1949)

Jul 5: National Health Service (NHS) begins in Britain

Jul 29: London Olympics begin

Oct 12: First Morris Minor produced

British Citizenship Act : all Commonwealth citizens qualify for British passports

Transistor radio invented

Long-playing record (LP) invented by Goldmark

Kinsey Report in USA Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male

World Health Organisation (WHO) established as part of UN

200 inch reflecting telescope completed at Mount Palomar, California (construction started in 1936)

'Steady State' theory of the Universe proposed by Bondi and Gold

Mailer The Naked and the Dead

1949

Mar 15: Clothes rationing ends in Britain

Apr 4: Twelve nations sign The North Atlantic Treaty creating NATO

Apr 20: First Badminton Horse Trials held

May 12: Russians lift the Berlin blockade

Aug 29: Russians explode their first atomic bomb

Sep 30: Berlin airlift ends

De Haviland produces the Comet – first jet airliner (see 1952)

Maiden flight of the Bristol Brabazon (broken up in 1953 for scrap)

Orwell 1984, (written in 1948, for which the title in an anagram)

Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman

Film The Third Man

1950

Mar 8: McCarthy begins Inquiry into Un-American Activities (Tydings Committee)

May 19: Points rationing ends in Britain

May 26: Petrol rationing ends in Britain

Jun 25: Korean War starts (to 27 Jul 1953)

Jun 28: England beaten 1-0 at soccer by the USA in the World Cup

Jul 11: Andy Pandy first seen on BBC TV

Sep 9: Soap rationing ends in Britain

Oct 7: China invades Tibet

Dec 28: The Peak District becomes the Britain's first National Park

UN Building completed in New York (opened 9 Jan 1951)

1951

Census: Pop. E&W 43.7M, Scot 5M. NI 1.37M

Jan 1: First episode of The Archers broadcast

May 3: Festival of Britain and Royal Festival Hall open on South Bank, London

May 28: First Goon Show broadcast

Oct 31: Zebra crossings introduced into law in Britain

Dec 20: Electricity first produced by nuclear power, from Experimental Breeder Reactor I in Idaho (see 1962)

Salinger Catcher in the Rye

Britten Billy Budd

1952

Feb 1: First TV detector van commissioned in Britain

Feb 6: George VI dies; Elizabeth II queen, returns from Kenya

Feb 21: Identity Cards abolished in Britain

Mar 17: Utility furniture and clothing scheme ends

Apr: Kingsway tram tunnel in London closes

May 2: First commercial jet airliner service launched, by BOAC Comet between London and Johannesburg

Jul 5: Last tram runs in London (Woolwich to New Cross)

Aug 16: Lynmouth flood disaster

Sep 6: DH110 crashes at Farnborough Air Show, 26 killed

Sep 29: John Cobb killed in attempt on world water speed record on Loch Ness

Oct 5: End of tea rationing in Britain

Oct 3: Britain explodes her first atomic bomb, in Monte Bello Islands, Australia

Oct 8: Harrow & Wealdstone rail crash, 112 killed

Nov 1: The first H-bomb ever ('Mike') was exploded by the USA – the mushroom cloud was 8 miles across and 27 miles high. The canopy was 100 miles wide. Radioactive mud fell out of the sky followed by heavy rain. 80 million tons of earth was vaporised.

Nov 5: Eisenhower sweeps to power as US President

Nov 14: First regular UK singles chart published by the New Musical Express

Nov 25: Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap opens in London

Dec 4: Great smog hits London

Dec 18: Flower Pot Men first broadcast on TV

Contraceptive pill invented (see 1961)

Radioactive carbon used for dating prehistoric objects

Bonn Convention: Britain, France and USA end their occupation of West Germany

Becket Waiting for Godot

Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea

Steinbeck East of Eden

1953

Jan 31/Feb 2: Said to be the biggest civil catastrophe in Britain in the 20th century – severe storm and high tides caused the loss of hundreds of lives –- effects travelled from the west coast of Scotland round to the south-east coast of England [The Netherlands were even worse affected with over a thousand deaths]

Feb 5: Sweet rationing ends in Britain

Mar 5: Death of Stalin

Mar 26: Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine

Apr 13: Casino Royale published – first James Bond book by Ian Fleming

Apr 24: Winston Churchill knighted

Apr 25: Francis Crick and James D Watson publish the double helix structure of DNA (see 1962)

May 29: Everest conquered by Hillary and Tensing

Jun 2: Coronation of Elizabeth II

Jul 27: End of the Korean War

Aug 12: USSR explodes Hydrogen Bomb

Sep 26: Sugar rationing ends in Britain (after nearly 14 years)

Nov 21: Piltdown Man skull declared a hoax by the Natural History Museum

Nov 25: Hungary becomes the first football team outside the British Isles to beat England at home, winning 6-3 at Wembley Stadium

Dec 1: Playboy magazine first published – Marilyn Monroe as centrefold

Dec 10: Pilkington Brothers patent the float glass process

The Quatermass Experiment on TV

Arthur Miller The Crucible

1954

Apr 11: 'The most boring day in history' since 1900? – according to a survey by by True Knowledge, apparently nothing happened worthy of report!

May 6: First sub 4 minute mile (Roger Bannister, 3 mins 59.4 secs)

May 10: Bill Haley and the Comets release Rock Around the Clock

May 29: First sub 5 minute mile by a woman (Diane Leather, 4 mins 59.6 secs)

Jul 3: Food rationing officially ends in Britain

Jul 5: BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin

Sep 30: First atomic powered sumbmarine USS Nautilus commissioned

First comprehensive school opens in London (Kidbrooke School in the London Borough of Greenwich)

Routemaster bus starts operating in London [or was it 1956?] (see also 2005)

Nov: First transistor radios sold

Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood

Golding Lord of the Flies

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

British Top 20 begins – first No.1 was Hold My Hand by Don Cornell

1955

Royal Commission on Common Land started – led to 1965 Common Land Registration Act

Jan 16: The Sooty Show first on TV

Apr 7: Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister

Apr 12: Anti-polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk declared safe and effective to use (available to public 1 May 1956)

Jul 27: Allied occupation of Austria (after WW2) ends

Sep 22: Commercial TV starts in Britain – first advert was for Gibbs SR toothpaste – BBC Radio kills off Grace Archer in retaliation

Sep 30: James Dean killed in a car crash
Late November – Lonnie Donegan's 1954 skiffle recording of Rock Island Line released: it becomes a hit in 1956 – a major influence on British pop music

Dec 12: Christopher Cockerell patents the hovercraft

'Mole' self-grip wrench patented by Thomas Coughtrie of Mole & Sons

Nabokov Lolita

Pop music: Bill Haley Rock Around the Clock

1956

Mar 1: Radiotelephony spelling alphabet introduced (Alpha, Bravo, etc)

Apr 17: Premium Bonds first launched – first prizes drawn on 1 Jun 1957

Apr 18: Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco

May 24: The first Eurovision Song Contest is held in Lugano, Switzerland – won by the host nation

Jun 3: 3rd class travel abolished on British Railways (renamed 'Third Class' as 'Second Class', which had been abolished in 1875 leaving just First and Third Class)

Sep 25: Submarine telephone cable under the Atlantic becomes operational

Oct 23: Hungarians protest against Soviet occupation (protest crushed on 4 Nov)

Oct 31: Britain and France invade Suez

Nov 16: Suez canal blocked for a few months (see also 1957 & 1967)

Britain constructs world's first large-scale nuclear power station in Cumberland

Emergence of the Angry Young Men in English literature

Pop music: Elvis Presley Heartbreak Hotel

1957

Jan 11: Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister

Feb 16: BBC TV started to broadcast Six-Five Special, breaking the 'Toddlers' Truce' of no broadcasting 6-7pm

Mar 8: Suez canal reopened by the Egyptians (see 1956)

Mar 25: Treaty of Rome to create European Economic Community (EEC) of six countries: France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg – became operational Jan 1958

Apr 26: First Sky at Night broadcast by BBC – presented by Patrick Moore

May 14: Post-Suez petrol rationing ends

May 15: Britain explodes her first hydrogen bomb, at Christmas Island

Jun 1: Premium Bonds first prizes drawn

June: Frisbee named

Sep 26: West Side Story opens in New York

Oct 1: UK introduces a vaccine against this year's Asian Flu

Jodrell Bank radio telescope became operational just in time for …

Oct 4: Sputnik I launched by Soviet Union – first artificial satellite

Nov 3: Sputnik 2 launched by Soviet Union – carried a dog ('Laika')

Dec 4: Lewisham rail disaster – 90 killed as two trains collide in thick fog and a viaduct collapses on top of them

Queen's first Christmas TV broadcast

 

Helvetica typeface developed (in Switzerland)

Which? magazine published in UK

Pop music: Elvis Presley All Shook Up

1958

Jan 31: Launch of Explorer 1 – first American satellite

Van Allen radiation belt round the earth confirmed by Explorer 1

Feb 6: Munich air disaster – Manchester United team members killed

Feb 25: CND launched

Mar 17: USA launches its first satellite (Vanguard 1) – space race with the USSR begins

Easter: First anti-nuclear protest march to Aldermaston (emergence of CND)

May 13: Velcro trade mark registered

Jul 10: Britain's first parking meters installed, Mayfair, London

Jul 26: Charles created Prince of Wales

First life peerages awarded

Race riots in Britain, at Notting Hill and in Nottingham

Aug 3: USS Nautilus travels under the polar ice cap

USA begins to produce Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs)

Electronic computers begin to be used in research, industry and commerce

Stereophonic records come into use

Oct 4: First jet-powered trans-Atlantic service starts (BOAC Comet 4)

Oct 5: Charles de Gaulle establishes Fifth Republic in France – and is elected President on 21 Dec

Oct 13: Michael Bond publishes the first Paddington Bear story

Oct 16: Blue Peter first broadcast on TV

Oct 26: First commercial flight of Boeing 707 (NY to Paris)

Dec 5: Inauguration of Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) in Britain (completed in 1979)

Dec 5: Preston by-pass opens – UK's first stretch of motorway

The Beatles pop group formed

Radio: Beyond Our Ken starts

Beckett Krapp's Last Tape

Pasternak Dr Zhivago

Pop music: Jerry Lee Lewis Great Balls of Fire; Everly Brothers All I Have to do is Dream

1959

Jan 3: Alaska became the 49th state of the USA

Feb 3: 'The Day The Music Died' – plane crash kills Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper

Feb 17: Vanguard 2 satellite launched – first to measure cloud-cover distribution

Apr 25: St Lawrence Seaway opens

May 24: Empire Day becomes Commonwealth Day

Aug: BMC Mini car launched

Aug 21: Hawaii becomes 50th State of the USA

Sep 14: USSR crash-lands unmanned Lunik on the moon

Oct 3: Postcodes introduced in Britain

Nov 1: First section of M1 motorway opened

Charles de Gaulle becomes French President

European Free Trade Association (EFTA) established as an alternative to the EEC

Leakey discovers 600,000 year-old human remains in Tanganyika

Films Some Like it Hot and La Dolce Vita

Anouilh Becket

Pop music: Buddy Holly It Doesn't Matter Any More; Cliff Richard Living Doll; Adam Faith What Do You Want

'The Year that changed Jazz': Miles Davis Kind of Blue; Charles Mingus Mingus Ah Um; Dave Brubeck Time Out; Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to Come

1960

Feb 3: Macmillan 'wind of change' speech in South Africa

Seventeen African colonies become independent this year

Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa

Mar 17: New £1 notes issued by Bank of England

Mar 18: Last steam locomotive of British Railways named

Jul 21: Francis Chichester arrives in New York aboard Gypsy Moth II (took 40 days), winning the first single-handed transatlantic yacht race which he co-founded (see 1967)

Aug 12: Echo I, the first (passive) communications satellite, launched

Aug: Russian Sputnik 5 orbits carrying two dogs, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants on board – all returned safely

Sep 12: MoT tests on motor vehicles introduced

Sep 29: Nikita Khrushchev disrupts the United Nations General Assembly with a number of angry outbursts

Oct 1: HMS Dreadnought nuclear submarine launched

Nov 2: Penguin Books found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case

Nov 19: First vertical flight of a Harrier jump-jet, at Dunsfold

Dec 9: First episode of Coronation Street broadcast – on 17 Sept 2010 became the world's longest-running TV soap opera currently in production

Dec 31: National Service ended

First lasers demonstrated

International Agreement to reserve Antarctica for scientific research (came into force 23 June 1961)

Pinter The Caretaker

Film: Hitchcock Psycho

Pop music: Eddie Cochran Three Steps to Heaven; Shadows Apache; Beatles first album Please Please Me

1961

Jan 1: Farthing ceases to be legal tender in UK

Jan 20: John F Kennedy becomes US President

Mar 8: First US Polaris submarines arrive at Holy Loch

Mar 13: Black & White £5 notes cease to be legal tender

Mar 14: New English Bible (New Testament) published

Apr 12: Yuri Gagarin first man in space – followed shortly afterwards by Alan Shepard on 5th May

Apr 23: Census: Pop. E&W 46M, Scot 5.1M, NI 1.4M

May 1: Betting shops legal in Britain

May 25: John F Kennedy announces his goal to put a "man on the moon" before the end of the decade

Aug 13: Berlin Wall construction starts (wall existed until Nov 1989)

Oct 10: Volcanic eruption on Tristan da Cunha – whole population evacuated to Britain

Oral contraceptive launched

Private Eye first published in UK

Joseph Heller Catch-22

Film West Side Story

Pop music: Helen Shapiro Walking Back to Happiness

1962

Feb 20: John Glenn first American in orbit (3 circuits in Friendship 7)

Apr 26: US Ranger 4 crashes on the far side of the Moon without returning any scientific data

May 25: Consecration of new Coventry Cathedral (old destroyed in WW2 blitz) – Britten War Requiem

Jun 15: First nuclear generated electricity to supplied National Grid (from Berkeley, Glos)

Jul 10: First TV transmission between US and Europe (Telstar) – first live broadcast on 23 Jul

Jul 20: First passenger-carrying hovercraft enters service, along the North Wales Coast from Moreton to Rhyl – but ends Sep 14.

Aug 5: Marilyn Monroe found dead

Aug 5: Nelson Mandela jailed

Aug 6: Jamaica gains full independence from the United Kingdom

Oct 5: First James Bond film Dr No released in UK

Oct 24: Cuba missile crisis – brink of nuclear war

Nov 24: That Was The Week That Was first broadcast on BBC TV

Nov 28: Britain and France agree to construct Concorde (see 1969)

Dec 22: No frost-free nights in Britain till 5 Mar 1963

Britain passes Commonwealth Immigrants Act to control immigration

Nobel Prize awarded to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins for discovery of molecular structure of DNA (see 1953)

Thalidomide withdrawn after it causes deformities in babies

Film Jules et Jim

Solzhenitsyn A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Pop music: Beatles Love Me Do

1963

Jan: Cold weather forces cancellation of most football matches (only 4 English First Division matches in the month) – the first 'pools panel' created

Mar 27: Beeching Report on British Railways (the 'Beeching Axe')

Jun 5: Secretary of State for War John Profumo resigns in a sex scandal

Jun 16: Valentina Tereshkova first woman in space

Jun 20: The "red telephone" link established between Soviet Union and United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis

Aug 1: Minimum prison age raised to 17

Aug 8: 'Great Train Robbery' on Glasgow to London mail train

Aug 28: Martin Luther King gives his I have a dream speech

Sep 17: Fylingdales (Yorks) early warning system operational

Sep 25: Denning Report on Profumo affair

Nov 18: Dartford Tunnel opens

Nov 22: President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas; Aldous Huxley died the same day

Nov 23: First episode of Dr Who on BBC TV

France vetoes Britain's entry into EEC

Pop music: Beatles achieve international fame — release of Please Please Me, From Me to You, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand

Rachel Carson Silent Spring, on the effects of chemical pesticides on the environment

Film The Birds

1964

Jan 1: First 'Top of the Pops' on BBC TV

Feb 7: The Beatles arrive on their first visit to the United States

Feb 25: Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) beats Sonny Liston

Mar 28: Pirate radio ship Radio Caroline starts broadcasting

Apr 9: First Greater London Council (GLC) election

Apr 21: BBC2 TV starts

Jul 31: US Ranger 7 sends back 4,000 photos from the moon before impact

Aug 22: Match of the Day starts on BBC2

Sep 4: Forth road bridge opens

Sep 15: The Sun newspaper founded in Britain, replacing the Daily Herald

Oct 16: Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister

Oct 16: China explodes an atomic bomb

 

McLuhan Understanding Media

CP Snow Corridors of Power

Films Dr Strangelove and A Fistful of Dollars

Pop music: Beatles Can't Buy Me Love, A Hard Day's Night, I Feel Fine; Rolling Stones It's All Over Now, Little Red Rooster; Animals House of the Rising Sun; Chuck Berry No Particular Place to Go

1965

Jan 24: Winston Churchill dies age 90

Feb 7: First US raids against North Vietnam

Feb 25: I'll Never Find Another You by The Seekers No.1 in UK

Mar 18: Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov becomes the first man to 'walk' in space

Apr 6: Launch of Early Bird commercial communications satellite

Jul 16: Mont Blanc road tunnel opens (begun in 1957)

Aug 1: TV ban on cigarette advertising in Britain

Aug 5: Common Land Registration Act – people who thought they still held common rights had to register them

Aug 15: The Beatles play at Shea Stadium in New York City

Sep 21: Oil strike by BP in North Sea (or natural gas?)

Oct 8: Post Office Tower operational in London

Oct 28: Death penalty for murder suspended in Britain for five-year trial period, then abolished 18 Dec 1969

Nov 11: Declaration of UDI in Rhodesia

Dec 22: 70mph speed limit on British roads

Britain enacts first Race Relations Act

Pop music: Beatles Ticket to Ride, Help!, Day Tripper; Rolling Stones The Last Time; Kinks Tired of Waiting for You; Byrds Mr Tambourine Man; Bob Dylan Like a Rolling Stone

1966

Feb 3: Soft landing on moon by unmanned Luna 9 – followed by Surveyor 1

Feb 14: Australia converts from £ to $

Mar 23: Archbishop of Canterbury meets Pope in Rome

May 3: The Times begins to print news on its front page in place of classified advertisements

May 16: Seamen's strike begins (ended 1 Jul)

Jul 30: World Cup won by England at Wembley (4-2 in extra time v West Germany)

Sep 8: First Severn road bridge opens

Oct 21: Aberfan disaster – slag heap slip kills 144, incl. 116 children

Dec 1: First Christmas stamps issued in Britain

Eighteen new universities were created in Britain between 1961–1966

Pop music: Sinatra Strangers in the Night; Beach Boys Good Vibrations

1967

Jan 4: Donald Campbell dies attempting to break his world water speed record on Conniston Water – his body and Bluebird recovered in 2002

Jan 27: Three US astronauts killed in fire during Apollo launch pad test

Mar 18: Torrey Canyon oil tanker runs aground off Lands End – first major oil spill

May 25: Celtic become the first British team to win the European Cup

May 28: Francis Chichester arrives in Plymouth after solo circumnavigation in Gipsy Moth IV (he was knighted 7th July at Greenwich by the queen using the sword with which Elizabeth I had knighted Sir Francis Drake four centuries earlier – see 1581)

Jun 5-10: Six Day War in Middle East – closes Suez Canal for 8 years (until 1975)

Jun 27: First withdrawal from a cash dispenser (ATM) in Britain – at Enfield branch of Barclays

Jul 1: First colour TV in Britain

Jul 13: Public Record Act – records now closed for only 30 years (but the census is still closed for 100 years)

Jul 18: Withdrawal from East of Suez by mid-70s announced

Aug 14: Offshore pirate radio stations declared illegal by the UK

Sep 3: Sweden changes rule of road to drive on right

Sep 20: QE2 launched on Clydebank

Sep 27: Queen Mary arrives Southampton at end of her last transatlantic voyage

Sep 30: BBC Radios 1, 2, 3 & 4 open – first record played on Radio 1 was the controversial Flowers in the Rain by 'The Move'

Oct 5: Introduction of majority verdicts in English courts

Oct 9: Che Guevara killed in Bolivia – becomes a cult hero

Oct 18: Russian spacecraft Venus IV became first successful probe to perform in-place analysis of the environment of another planet

Dec 3: First human heart transplant (in South Africa by Christiaan Barnard)

Richard Leakey discovers ancient human fossil remains in the Omo River valley in Ethiopia

McLuhan The Medium is the Message

Film The Graduate

Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Pop music: Monkees I'm a Believer; Beatles All You Need is Love, Sgt Pepper; Procul Harem A Whiter Shade of Pale

1968

Jan 30: Tet Offensive begins in Vietnam

Feb 18: British Standard Time introduced – Summer Time became permanent [which I remember thinking was a great idea!], but contrary arguments prevailed and we reverted to GMT in October 1971 :–(

Apr 18: London Bridge sold (and eventually moved to Arizona) – modern London Bridge, built around it as it was demolished, was opened in Mar 1973

Apr 20: Enoch Powell 'Rivers of Blood' speech on immigration

Apr 23: Issue of 5p and 10p decimal coins in Britain

May 10: Student riots in Paris

May 29: Manchester United first English club to win the European Cup

Jun 5: Robert F Kennedy shot – dies next day

Jul 29: Pope encyclical condemns all artificial forms of birth control

Aug 11: Last steam passenger train service ran in Britain (Carlisle–Liverpool)

Aug: Soviets crush freedom movement in Czechoslovakia

Sep 15: Severe flooding in England

Sep 16: Two-tier postal rate starts in Britain

Sep 27: Hair opens in London

Oct 5: Beginning of disturbances in N Ireland

Commenwealth Immigration Act further restricts immigrants

Martin Luther King (Apr 4) and Robert Kennedy (Jun 6) both assassinated in USA

Christmas: Apollo 8 orbits the moon with a crew of 3 and returns to Earth safely

The term Pulsar first used for radio stars emitting regular pulses of energy

Film 2001

Pop music: Rolling Stones Jumping Jack Flash; Beatles Hey Jude; Status Quo Pictures of Matchstick Men

1969

Jan 30: The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London

Mar 2: Maiden flight of Concorde, at Toulouse

Mar 7: Victoria Line tube opens in London

Mar: B&Q (first DIY superstore) founded in Southampton by Richard Block and David Quayle

Apr 17: Voting age lowered from 21 to 18

May 2: Maiden voyage of liner Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2)

Jul 1: Investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle

Jul 20/21: Apollo 11 – First men land on the moon (Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin)

Jul 31: Halfpenny ceases to be legal tender in Britain

Aug 8: Iconic photograph taken of The Beatles crossing the zebra crossing on Abbey Road, London

Aug 14: Civil disturbances in Ulster – Britain sends troops to support civil authorities

Aug 15-18: Woodstock Music Festival in NY State attracts 300,000 fans

Sep 7: First episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus recorded

Oct 14: 50p coin introduced in Britain (reduced in size 1998)

Nov 19: Apollo 12 – second manned landing on the moon (Charles Conrad & Alan Bean)

Dec 18: Death penalty for murder abolished in Britain (had already been suspended since Oct 1965)

Open University established in Britain, teaching via radio and TV (first students started Jan 1971)
Update to death certificate format to include date of birth and maiden names

Labour Government issues White Paper In Place of Strife – attempts to reform the Trades Union movement

Roth Portnoy's Complaint

Films Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy

Pop music: Marvin Gaye I Heard it on the Grapevine; Beatles Abbey Road

1970

Mar 16: Publication of complete New English Bible

Apr 11: Apollo 13 launched – oxygen tank explosion aborted the moon landing mission two days later – successfully returned to Earth on 17 Apr

Jun 17: Decimal postage stamps first issued for sale in Britain

Jun 19: Edward Heath becomes Prime Minister

Jul 30: Damages awarded to Thalidomide victims

Sep 19: First Glastonbury Festival held

Nov 20: Ten shilling note (50p after decimalisation) goes out of circulation in Britain

Boeing 747 (Jumbo jet) goes into service

Film MASH

Pop music: Simon & Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water

1971

Jan 1: Divorce Reform Act (1969) comes into force

Jan 3: Open University starts

Feb 15: Decimalisation of coinage in UK and Republic of Ireland

Aug 9: Internment without trial introduced in N Ireland

Aug 10: First of the 'Mr Men' books by Roger Hargreaves published

Oct 28: Parliament votes to join Common Market (joined 1973)

Oct 28: UK launches its first (and for many years only) satellite, Prospero

Nov 13: Mariner 9, becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars)

Banking and Financial Dealings Act – replaced the Bank Holidays Act of 1871

Sunday becomes the seventh day in the week as UK adopts decision of the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) to call Monday the first day

'Greenpeace' founded

Rolls-Royce declared bankrupt

Film A Clockwork Orange

Pop music: Led Zeppelin Stairway to Heaven recorded in Headley Grange

1972

Jan 30: 'Bloody Sunday' in Derry, Northern Ireland

Feb 9: Power workers crisis

Mar 2: Pioneer 10 launches, carrying a plaque featuring the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft

May 22: Ceylon changes its name to Sri Lanka

May 28: Duke of Windsor (ex-King Edward VIII) dies in Paris

Oct 5: United Reformed Church founded out of Congregational and Presbyterian Churches in E&W

Oct 10: John Betjeman becomes Poet Laureate

Dec 7: Last manned moon mission, Apollo 17, launched – crew take the 'Blue marble' photograph of earth
First digital watch, the Hamilton Pulsar

Britain imposes direct rule in Northern Ireland

Strict anti-hijack measures introduced internationally, especially at airports

1973

Jan 1: Britain enters EEC Common Market (with Ireland and Denmark)

Jan 27: Vietnam ceasefire agreement signed

Mar 17: Modern London Bridge opened by the Queen

Apr 1: VAT introduced in Britain

Apr 3: First call made (in New York) on a portable cellular phone

May 14: Skylab launched

Sep 26: Concorde makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in record-breaking time

Oct 6: Yom Kippur War precipitates world oil crisis

Oct 22: Sydney Opera House opens

Oct 14: Marriage of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips in Westminster Abbey

Dec 31: Miners strike and oil crisis precipitate 'three-day week' (till 9 Mar 1974) to conserve power

Pop music: Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon

1974

Jun1: Flixborough disaster: explosion at chemical plant kills 28 people

Jun 26: First scanning of a barcoded product (a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum at Marsh's Supermarket in Troy, Ohio)

Aug 8: President Nixon resigns over Watergate scandal

Nov 7: Lord Lucan disappears

Nov 21: Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA

Dec 5: Last episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus broadcast on BBC

Several new 'counties' formed in Britain

US Mariner satellite transmits detailed pictures of Venus and Mercury

India becomes the sixth nation to explode a nuclear device

1975

Jan: First personal computer (Altair 8800) introduced (others say the Apple II in 1977) [see 1981]

Feb 11: Margaret Thatcher becomes leader of Conservative party (in opposition)

Feb 28: Moorgate tube crash in London – over 43 deaths, greatest loss of life on the Underground in peacetime. The cause of the incident was never conclusively determined

Mar 4: Charlie Chaplin knighted

Apr 30: End of Vietnam war

Jun 5: Suez canal reopens (after 8 years closure)

Jun 5: UK votes in a referendum to stay in the European Community

Jul 5: Arthur Ashe wins Wimbledon singles title

Jul 17: American Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock in orbit

Oct 29: 'Yorkshire Ripper' commits his first murder

Nov 3: First North Sea oil comes ashore

Nov 20: General Franco dies in Spain; Juan Carlos declared King

Nov 29: The name 'Micro-soft' coined by Bill Gates (Microsoft' became a Trademark the following year)

Dec 27: Equal Pay Act and Sex Discrimination Act come into force

Unemployment in Britain rises above 1M for first time since before WW2

Dutch Elm disease devastates trees across UK

Domestic video cassette recorders introduced

West Indies win the first cricket World Cup

Film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Pop music: Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here; Queen Night at the Opera

1976

Jan 21: Concorde enters supersonic passenger service [see 2000]

Jan 31: Mamma Mia by Abba No.1 in UK

Aug 6: Drought Act 1976 comes into force — the long, hot summer

'Cod War' between Britain and Iceland

Deaths exceeded live births in E&W for first time since records began in 1837

James Callaghan becomes Prime Minister

Death of Mao Tse-tung

Apr 1: Apple Computer formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

Viking 1 & Viking 2 landed on Mars

National Theatre opens in London

1977

Mar 23: Lib-Lab pact

Apr 2: Red Rum wins a third Grand National

May 25: George Lucas' film Star Wars released

Jun 1: Road speed limits: 70mph dual roads; 60mph single

Jun 5: Apple II, the first practical personal computer, goes on sale

Jun 7: Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations in London

Jun 30: Virginia Wade wins the Ladies Singles title at Wimbledon

Aug 16: Elvis Presley dies

Astronomers observe rings round Uranus

Oct 26: Eradication of smallpox world-wide declared by WHO (certified in 1979)

Nov 22: Regular supersonic Concorde service betweeen London and NY inaugurated

Pop music: Wings Mull of Kintyre; rise of Punk bands such as 'The Sex Pistols'

1978

Apr 8: Regular broadcast of proceedings in Parliament starts

May 1: First May Day holiday in Britain

Jul 25: World's first 'test tube' baby, Louise Browne born in Oldham

Oct 15: Pope John Paul II elected – a Pole, and first non-Italian for 450 years – died 2 Apr 2005

Nov 30: Publication of The Times suspended – industrial relations problems (until 13 Nov 1979)

Film The Deer Hunter

Pop music: Fleetwood Mac Rumours

1979

Jan 6: YMCA by Village People reached No.1 in UK

Feb 1: Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran

Mar 1: 32.5% of Scots vote in favour of devolution (40% needed) – Welsh vote overwhelmingly against

Mar 30: Airey Neave killed by a car bomb at Westminster

Mar 31: Withdrawal of Royal Navy from Malta

Apr 30: Jubilee Line opens on London Underground system

May 4: Margaret Thatcher becomes first woman UK Prime Minister

Jul 1: Sony introduces the Walkman

Aug 27: Lord Mountbatten and 3 others killed in bomb blast off coast of Sligo, Ireland

Sep 18: ILEA votes to abolish corporal punishment in its schools

Oct: VisiCalc spreadsheet released in USA

Nov 13: The Times returns to circulation

Dec 1: Lancaster House agreement to give Southern Rhodesia independence (became Zimbabwe on 18 Apr 1980)

Dec 18: Sound barrier exceeded on land for first time

1980

May 4: Death of President Tito of Yugoslavia

May 5: SAS storm Iranian Embassy in London to free hostages

Dec 8: John Lennon assassinated in New York

'Solidarity' formed by unions in Poland

'Stealth' bomber developed by USA

Film The Elephant Man

1981

Jan 10: Imagine by John Lennon No.1 in UK

Jan 25: Launch of SDP by 'Gang of Four' in Britain

Mar 29: First London marathon run

Apr 5: Census day in Britain

Apr 11: Brixton riots in South London – 30 other British cities also experience riots

Apr 12: First US Space Shuttle (Columbia) launched – see 2011 for last Space Shuttle flight

Apr 25: Worst April blizzards this century in Britain

Apr 27: First use of computer mouse (by Xerox PARC system)

June: First cases of AIDS recognised in California

Jul 17: Queen opens the Humber Estuary Bridge

Jul 29: Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer (divorced 28 Aug 1996)

Aug 12: IBM launches its PC — starts the general use of personal computers

Film Chariots of Fire

1982

Jan 26: Unemployment reached 3 million in Britain (1 in 8 of working population)

Feb 5: Laker Airways collapses

Feb 19: DeLorean Car factory in Belfast goes into receivership

Mar 18: Argentinians raised flag in South Georgia

Apr 2: Argentina invades Falkland (Malvinas) Islands

Apr 5: Royal Navy fleet sails from Portsmouth for Falklands

May 2: British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sinks Argentine cruiser General Belgrano

May 28: First land battle in Falklands (Goose Green)

May 29: Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope pray together in Canterbury Cathedral

Jun 14: Ceasefire in Falklands

Jun 21: Birth of Prince William of Wales

Jul 20: IRA bombings in London (Hyde Park and Regents Park)

Sep 19: Smiley emoticon :-) said to have been used for the first time

Oct 11: Mary Rose raised in the Solent (sank in 1545)

Oct 31: Thames Barrier raised for first time (some say first public demonstration Nov 7)

Nov 2: Channel 4 TV station launched – first programme 'Countdown'

Nov 4: Lorries up to 38 tonnes allowed on Britain's roads

Dec 12: Women's peace protest at Greenham Common (Cruise missiles arrived 14 Nov 1983)

First permanent artificial heart fitted in Salt Lake City

Film ET

1983

Jan 17: Start of breakfast TV in Britain

Jan 25: Spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 released

Jan 31: Seat belt law comes into force

Apr 21: £1 coin into circulation in Britain

Oct 7: Plans to abolish GLC announced

Nov 26: Brinks Mat robbery: 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are stolen from a vault at Heathrow Airport
First female Lord Mayor of London elected (Dame Mary Donaldson)

Pop music: Michael Jackson Thriller

1984

Jan 9: FTSE index exceeded 800

Jan 24: Apple Macintosh computer introduced in USA

Mar 6: Miners strike begins

Apr 17: Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher killed by gunfire from the Libyan Embassy in London

Jun 22: Inaugural flight of Virgin Atlantic

Jul 9: York Minster struck by lightning – the resulting fire damaged much of the building but the "Rose Window" not affected

Oct 12: IRA bomb explodes at Tory conference hotel in Brighton – 4 killed

Oct 24: Miners' strike — High Court orders sequestration of NUM assets

Oct 31: Indira Gandhi assassinated

Dec 3: British Telecom privatised – shares make massive gains on first day's trading

Dec 3: Bhopal disaster in India

Dec 15: Pop Music: Band Aid Do they know it's Christmas? reaches No.1

Dec 20: Summit Tunnel Fire near Todmorton

George Orwell got it wrong? (in his book '1984', written in 1948)

1985

Mar 3: Miners agree to call off strike

Mar 11: Al Fayed buys Harrods

Mar 18: First episode of Neighbours in Australia

May 29: Heysel Stadium disaster in Brussels

Jun 14: Schengen Agreement on abolition of border controls agreed between Belgium, France, West Germany, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands – not implemented until 26 Mar 1995 when it also included Spain & Portugal – by 2007 there are 30 states included

Jul 13: Live Aid pop concert raises over £50M for famine relief

Sep 1: Wreck of Titanic found (sank 1912)

1986

Mar 31: GLC and 6 metropolitan councils abolished

Apr 26: Chernobyl nuclear accident – radiation reached Britain on 2 May

May 7: Mannie Shinwell, veteran politician, dies aged 101

May 26: The European Community adopts the European flag

Jul 23: Prince Andrew, Duke of York marries Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey

Oct 27: 'Big Bang' (deregulation) of the London Stock Market

Oct 29: M25 ring round London completed with the section between J22 and J23 (London Colney and South Mimms)

Dec 23: Safe landing of first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling (took 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds)

1987

Feb 2: Terry Waite kidnapped in Beirut (released 17 Nov 1991)

Mar 6: Car ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes off Zeebrugge – 188 die

Jul 1: Excavation begins on the Channel Tunnel (see 1990 & 1994)

Aug 19: Hungerford Massacre – Michael Ryan kills sixteen people with a rifle

Oct 16: The 'Hurricane' sweeps southern England

Oct 19: 'Black Monday' in the City of London – Stock Market crash

Nov 8: Enniskillen bombing at a Remembrance Day ceremony

Nov 18: King's Cross fire in London – 31 people die

World population crossed the 5 billion mark

1988

Feb 5: First 'Red Nose Day' in UK, raising money for charity

Mar 11: Bank of England £1 notes cease to be legal tender

Jul 6: Piper Alpha disaster – North Sea oil platform destroyed by explosion and fire killing 167 men

Nov 15: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act – reformulated the statutory basis of copyright law (including performing rights) in the UK

Dec 12: Clapham Junction rail crash kills 35 and injures hundreds after two collisions of three commuter trains

Dec 21: Lockerbie disaster – Pan Am flight 103 explodes over Scotland

Order of the Garter opened to women

1989

Jan 8: Kegworth air disaster – a British Midland flight crashes into the M1 motorway

Feb 14: Fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses

Feb 14: The first of 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System is placed into orbit

Mar 2: EU decision to ban production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century

Poll Tax implemented in Scotland

Jun 5: Tanks stopped in Tiananmen Square, Peking by unknown protester

Nov 9: Berlin Wall torn down

Nov 21: Proceedings of House of Commons first televised live

Second edition of Oxford English Dictionary published

1990

Feb 11: Nelson Mandela released in South Africa

Mar 31: Riots in London against Poll Tax which had been implemented in England & Wales

Apr 25: Hubble space telescope launched

Aug 2: Iraq invades Kuwait

Oct 3: German reunification

Nov 22: Margaret Thatcher resigns as Conservative party leader (and Prime Minister) — John Major elected

Dec 1: Channel Tunnel excavation teams meet in the middle

1991

Poll Tax replaced (by Council Tax)

May 18: Helen Sharman is first British Astronaut in Space

Aug: Collapse of the Soviet Union

Sep 6: Leningrad renamed St Petersburg

Nov 5: Robert Maxwell drowns at sea

Internet begins

1992

Feb 7: European Union formed by The Maastricht Treaty [see 1993]

Apr 22: Betty Boothroyd elected as first female Speaker of the House of Commons

Aug 15: Football Premier League kicks off in England

Sep 16: 'Black Wednesday' as Pound leaves the ERM

Nov 20: Fire breaks out in Windsor Castle causing over £50 million worth of damage

Nov 24: The Queen describes this year as an Annus Horribilis

1993

Jul: Ratification of Maastricht Treaty, established the European Union (EU)

Sep: AOL sent out CDs to every household in the USA, giving internet access to millions

Betty Boothroyd first woman Speaker of the House of Commons (to 2000)

Elizabeth II becomes first British Monarch to pay Income Tax

1994

Mar 12: Church of England ordains its first female priests

May 6: Channel Tunnel open to traffic

Nov 19: National Lottery starts

15 million people connected to the Internet by now

1995

Feb 26: Nick Leeson brings down Barings

Jul 15: First item sold on Amazon.com

Sep: First Grayshott Literary Festival

Nov 16: The Queen Mother has a hip replacement operation at 95 years old

Nov 22: Toy Story released – first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery

Dec 7: Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter (launched from shuttle 18 Oct 1989)

1996

Feb 9: IRA bomb explodes in London Docklands – ends 17 month ceasefire

Mar 13: Dunblane massacre

Jun 15: IRA bomb explodes in Manchester

Jul 5: Scientists in Scotland clone a sheep (Dolly)

Aug 28: Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales are divorced

BSE beef scare in UK

1997

Mar 30: Channel 5 TV begins in UK (launched by the Spice Girls)

Apr 1: Hale-Bopp comet at its brightest

May 1: 'New' Labour landslide victory in Britain (Tony Blair replaces John Major as Prime Minister)

May 6: Announcement that Bank of England to be made independent of Government control

May 11: First time a computer beats a master at chess (IBM's Deep Blue v Garry Kasparov)

Jun 30: Publication of first Harry Potter novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Jul 1: Hong Kong returned to China

Jul 4: Landing by American 'Pathfinder Rover' on Mars

Jul 19: IRA declares a ceasefire

Aug 31: Diana, Princess of Wales killed in car crash in Paris

Sep 25: Land speed record breaks sound barrier for first time – Wing Commander Andy Green in Thrust SSC at Black Rock Desert, USA

1998

Apr 10: Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland – effectively implemented in May 2007

Aug 14: Car bomb explodes in Omagh killing 29 people

Sep 27: Google search engine founded

Nov 20: First module of the International Space Station launched

Dec 19: US President Bill Clinton is impeached over Monica Lewinsky scandal

Film Titanic wins 11 Oscars

1999

Jan 1: European Monetary Union begins – UK opts out – by the end of the year the Euro has approximately the same value as the US Dollar

Mar: First circumnavigation of the earth in a hot-air balloon (Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones)

Jul 1: The Scottish Parliament is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth – powers are officially transferred from the Scottish Office in London to the new devolved Scottish Executive in Edinburgh

Aug 11: Total eclipse of the sun visible in Devon and Cornwall

Nov 11: Hereditary Peers no longer have right to sit in House of Lords

Dec: Separate parliaments created for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (but not for England)

World population reaches 6 billion (estimate)

2000

Jan 1: Millennium celebrations postponed due to widespread computer failures! – only joking!! – The year in Britain started with a 'flu bug rather than a millennium bug

Millennium Dome at Greenwich got off to a bad start when Press and celebratories were left queuing for tickets in the rain, and they never forgave it – the project was dogged by problems all year and became the butt of jokes

Mar: London Eye opens, late but popular

Apr 22: The Big Number Change takes place in the UK – new telephone dialling codes assigned to Cardiff, Coventry, London, Northern Ireland, Portsmouth and Southampton

May 4: Ken Livingstone elected first Mayor of London (not to be confused with Lord Mayor of London!)

Jun 10: Millennium footbridge over the Thames opens, but wobbles and is quickly declared dangerous and closed – finally reopened Feb 2002

Jul 25: A chartered Air France Concorde crashes on take-off at Paris with loss of all lives – debris on the runway blamed for causing fuel to escape and catch fire, and all Concordes grounded until 7 November 2001

Sep: 'People Power' emerged suddenly as protestors against high Road Fuel Tax used mobile phones and the Internet to co-ordinate blockades on fuel depots – resulted in nationwide panic buying of fuel and service stations running out across the country

Oct 17: Derailment at speed on the main London-North eastern line at Hatfield caused by a broken rail – Railtrack put restrictions on the rest of the network while all other suspect locations were checked

Oct/Nov/Dec: Heavy rains cause worst flooding since records began (1850s) in many parts of Britain

Nov 2: First crew arrive at the International Space Station.

Nov 14: New Prayer Book introduced in Anglican Church – the way this year's going, we need it!

Dec: US Presidential election goes to a penalty shoot out!

World population crossed the 6 billion mark

2001

Jan 1: Real millennium celebrations begin!! ;-)

Jan 15: Wikipedia goes on-line

Feb: Outbreak of Foot & Mouth disease in UK – lasted until October – caused postponement of local and general elections from May to June

Feb 15: First draft of the complete human genome published in Nature

Mar 23: Mir space station successfully ditched in the Pacific

Apr 29: UK Census Day

May 12: FA Cup Final played at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff – first time away from Wembley since 1922

June 7: General Election – Labour returned again with a large majority, the first time they had succeeded in gaining a second term – but turnout lowest since 1918

Sep 1: New-style number plates on road vehicles in UK [eg. AB 51 ABC]

Sep 11: Terrorist attack on the United States – commercial planes hi-jacked and crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre (destroying it) and one section of the Pentagon

Oct 23: iPod launched by Apple

Nov 7: Concorde flights resume after modifications to tyres and fuel tanks (see 2003)

Nov: I publish my first book by 'Print on Demand' method - see tips on self-publishing

Dec 15: The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years, still leaning

UK Christmas stamps self-adhesive for the first time (self-adhesive 1st & 2nd class definitives already on sale)

2002

Jan 1: Twelve major countries in Europe (Austria, Belgium, Holland, Irish Republic, Italy, Luxembourg, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Portugal) and their dependents start using the Euro instead of their old national currencies; the UK stays out – the Euro worth 62½p at this time

Jan 2: UK 1901 census details available

Feb 22: Millennium Bridge over the Thames in London finally opens

Mar 30: The Queen Mother dies, aged 101 years

Jun 3&4: Two Bank Holidays declared in UK to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee

Jul 2: Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon

2003

Feb 1: Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during re-entry, killing all seven astronauts aboard

Feb 17: Start of Congestion Charge for traffic entering central London

Aug 10: Temperatures reach record high of 101 F (38.3 C) in Kent

Oct 24: Last commercial flight of Concorde

Nov 22: England wins Rugby World Cup in nail-biting final in Australia – first northern hemisphere team to do this

Dec 13: Saddam Hussein captured near his home town of Tikrit (executed 30 Dec 2006)

Dec 26: Queen Mary 2 arrives in Southampton from the builder's yard in France

2004

Mar 29: Alistair Cooke dies at the age of 95 – until four weeks previously, and since 1946, he had broadcast his regular 'Letter from America' on BBC radio

Mar 29: Ireland becomes first country in the world to ban smoking in public places

May 1: Enlargement of the European Union to include 25 members by the entry of 10 new states: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta, Cyprus.

2005

Feb 16: Kyoto Protocol on climate change came into force

Feb 18: Ban on hunting with dogs came into force in England & Wales (had already been a similar law for about two years in Scotland)

Apr 2: Death of Pope John Paul II, first non-Italian Pope for 450 years when elected in 1978

Apr 19: Pope Benedict XVI elected – first German Pope for about 1,000 years

Jul 6: London chosen as venue for the 2012 Olympic Games

Jul 7: Suicide bombers attack London for the first time

Jul 28: IRA declare an end to their 'armed struggle'

Sep 12: England regain the 'Ashes' after a gripping Test series (but are whitewashed 5-0 in the return series in Australia 2007)

Nov 22: Angela Merkel becomes first female Chancellor of Germany

Nov 30: John Sentamu becomes Archbishop of York; the first black archbishop in the Church of England

Dec 9: Last Routemaster bus runs on regular service in London (see 1954)

Dec 11: Explosions at the Buncefield Oil Depot in Hemel Hempstead

Dec 21: Same-sex civil partnerships begin – famously, on this day, between Elton John and David Furnish

2006

Mar 1: Welsh Assembly Building opened by the Queen

Mar 26: Prohibition of smoking in enclosed public places in Scotland

Apr 21: 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II

Aug 21: UK postage rates start to be measured by size as well as by weight

Aug 24: Redefinition of the word 'planet' excludes Pluto

Dec 30: Saddam Hussein executed

2007

Jan 1: Further enlargement of the European Union to include Bulgaria and Romania

Feb 19: Extension of Congestion Charge zone for London, westwards

May 8: A Northern Ireland Executive formed under the leadership of Ian Paisley (DUP) and Martin McGuinness (Sinn Fein)

Jun 27: Tony Blair resigns as Prime Minister after 10 years – replaced by Gordon Brown

Jul 1: Prohibition of smoking in enclosed public places in England (thus completing cover of the entire UK)

Jul 21: Seventh and final Harry Potter book released

Oct 25: First commercial flight of Airbus A380 (Singapore to Sydney)

Nov 14: First rail service direct from St Pancras to France (replacing that from Waterloo)

2008

Jan 21: Stock markets around the world plunge fueled by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis

Feb 22: Northern Rock the first bank in Europe to be taken into state control

Apr 22: Surgeons at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital perform the first operations using bionic eyes, implanting them into two blind patients

Sep 19: Large Hadron Collider operations halted after 8 days due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets

Nov 4: Barack Obama elected the 44th President of the United States

Nov 11: RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 departs on her last voyage from Southampton to Dubai to become a floating hotel

Dec 10: Sark holds its first fully democratic elections

Dec: Woolworths close all their UK stores

2009

Jan 12: UK 1911 census details released early with one column of information hidden from view. The full data was not released until 2012

Feb 2: During this week the heaviest snowfall in 18 years disrupts air and road traffic and closes schools across much of the UK

Mar 5: Bank of England reduces interest rate to a record low of 0.5% (but see 2016)

Jul 21: England beat Australia in a cricket Test Match at Lord's for the first time in 75 years

Oct 1: Supreme Court replaces the Law Lords in Parliament as the last court of appeal in UK in all matters other than criminal cases in Scotland

Dec 13: Circle Line on the London Underground system to include the spur to Hammersmith; regular 'Javelin' high speed train service starts between St Pancras and Ashford, Kent

Dec 19: Eurostar rail service through the Channel tunnel disrupted for some days due to the wrong sort of snow in France!

2010

Apr 15: Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland closes airspace over north-western Europe for 6 days – it was very peaceful!
May 11: Coalition Government formed in UK (Conservative & Lib-Dem)

Oct 13: In a blaze of publicity 33 miners successfully rescued from a deep copper mine in Chile

2011

Jan 4: Start of the 'Arab spring' riots
Jan 7: England win the Ashes in Australia

Jan 18: Last roll of Kodachrome processed
Mar 11: Tsunami hits Japan causing an emergency at the Fukushima nuclear power station

Mar 27: UK Census Day

Apr 29: The wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Kate Middleton takes place in London
May 2: Osama bin Laden killed in Pakistan by American forces

Jul 10: Last edition of the News of the World (No. 8,674) printed – paper closed down due to 'phone hacking' scandal (see 1843)

Jul 21: Last Space Shuttle mission touches down

2012

Mar 13: After 244 years since its first publication, the Encyclopaedia Britannica discontinues its print edition (see 1768)
Jun 4&5: Two Bank Holidays declared in UK to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee
Jul 4: Discovery of the Higgs boson confirmed at the Large Hadron Collider

Jul 27-Aug 12: London hosts the Olympic Games
Aug 6: Curiosity rover successfully lands on Mars
Aug 29-Sep 9: London hosts the Paralympic Games
Sep 12: Skeleton found under a car park in Leicester declared to be that of of King Richard III (1452-1485)
Oct 14: Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person to break the sound barrier without any machine assistance during a space dive from a balloon 24 miles high
Nov 29: Findings of the Leveson Inquiry into the British media announced
Despite beginning with drought in some areas, 2012 was the second wettest year on record in the UK and the wettest ever in England

2013

Feb 15: A meteor explodes over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,491 people and damaging over 4,300 buildings. It is the most powerful meteor observed to strike Earth's atmosphere in over a century

Feb 28: Pope Benedict XVI resigns, becoming the first pope to do so since Gregory XII in 1415, and the first to do so voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294

Dec 14: Chinese spacecraft Chang'e 3, carrying the Yutu rover, becomes the first spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon since 1976

2014

Feb 26: Russia annexes Crimea from Ukraine

Mar 8: Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappears with 239 people on board – presumed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean

Jul 17: Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashes in Ukraine, after being shot down by a missile, killing 298 people
Nov 12: Philae lands on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

2015

Mar 6: Spacecraft Dawn put into orbit round Ceres

Mar 26: Richard III reburied in Leicester Cathedral over 500 years after his death

Jul 14: Fly-by of Pluto by New Horizons

2016

May 2: Leicester City FC win the English Premier League – 5,000-1 outsiders at the start of the season

Jun 23: UK Referendum results in an unexpected small majority in favour of leaving the European Union

Jun 27: England knocked out of the Euro 2016 football competition by Iceland, who play no domestic professional football

Aug 5: Bank of England reduces interest rate to another record low of 0.25% (see 2009)

Sep: Bank of England introduces the plastic £5 note – old paper note ceases to be legal tender on 5 May 2017

Sep 30: The Rosetta probe makes its final landing on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

2017

Mar 28: Bank of England introduces the multi-sided £1 coin – old coin ceases to be legal tender on 15 October 2017

Sep: Bank of England introduces the 'plastic Jane' £10 note (has picture of Jane Austen on it) – old paper note ceases to be legal tender on 2 March 2018

2018

May 19: Prince Harry marries Meghan Markle
Dec 7: Report by the UN International Telecommunication Union that more than half of the world's population are now using the Internet

2019

Jan 1: Fly-by of 'Ultima Thule' by New Horizons
Jan 3: Chinese probe 'Chang'e 4' lands on the far side of the moon
Mar 10: All Boeing 737 MAX aircraft grounded soon after a second crash on this date
Apr 15: Fire destroys roof and spire of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris
May 23: European Parliamentary election in UK, despite the UK's intention to leave the EU
Jun 7: Theresa May resigns as leader of the Conservative party
Jul 24: Boris Johnson succeeds Theresa May as Prime Minister of the UK
Sep 10: UK Parliament prorogued by Boris Johnson (reversed as 'unlawful' on Sep 24 by the High Court)
Sep 23: Old-established travel firm Thomas Cook declared bankrupt
Nov 25: The World Meteorological Organization reports levels of 'greenhouse' gases in the atmosphere have reached a new record high of 407.8 parts per million
Dec 12: UK General Election gives Boris Johnson a majority of 80 seats
Dec 31: China informs the World Health Organization (WHO) that a new coronavirus has broken out in Wuhan (declared a 'pandemic' in March 2020)

2020

Jan 31: UK formally withdraw from the EU, beginning an 11-month transition period

Feb 20: Bank of England introduces a plastic £20 note (has JMW Turner on the reverse)

Mar 11: WHO declares the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic

Mar 30: 2020 Summer Olympics rescheduled to 2021

May 26: Protests caused by the murder of George Floyd break out in the US and across the world

May 30: First crewed flight of the SpaceX Dragon 2 (first manned US spaceflight since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011)

Nov 7: Joe Biden declared 46th President of the USA, defeating Donald Trump

Dec 8: UK becomes the first nation to begin mass inoculation campagn against Covid-19

2021

Jan 6: Supporters of Donald Trump attack the US Capitol

Jan 20: Joe Biden inaugurated as US President

Jan 26: The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases exceeds 100 million worldwide

Feb 18: NASA's Perseverance rover (with helicopter drone) lands on Mars

Mar 23: 'Ever Given' container ship runs aground in the Suez Canal, obstructing it until 29 March

May 14: China lands its Zhurong rover on Mars

Jun 17: China sends its first 3 astronauts to its Tiangong Space Station

Jul 23: Rescheduled 2020 Summer Olympics open in Tokyo

Aug 30: USA completes its military withdrawal from Afganistan, ending 20 years of operations there

Sep 16: First all-civilian space flight (launched by SpaceX)

Sep 28: National identifier on British cars changes from 'GB' to 'UK'

Oct 6: WHO endorses the first malaria vaccine

Oct 31: COP26 (UN Climate Change Conference) opens in Glasgow

Dec 25: James Webb Space Telescope launched

2022

May 24: First train runs on the Elizabeth Line (aka 'Crossrail') in London

Jul 7: Boris Johnson resigns as UK Prime Minister
Jul 12: First images from the James Webb Space Telescope are shown
Sep 6: Liz Truss becomes the UK's third female Prime Minister – sees the Queen at Balmoral
Sep 8: Queen Elizabeth II dies aged 97 after reigning for 70 years; Prince Charles becomes King Charles III

Sep 30: Paper £20 and £50 notes no longer legal tender in UK

Oct 20: Liz Truss resigns as UK Prime Minister (shortest tenure on record!) – replaced by Rishi Sunak

Nov 16: Artemis 1 launched at Cape Canaveral

2023

Jan 20: Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the Moon, married Anca Faur on his 93rd birthday
Feb 27: Age for marriage in England & Wales raised from 16 to 18 (remains 16 in Scotland)

Feb 28: Royal Mail issue the final special set of stamps featuring the late Queen Elizabeth II, to mark the centenary of The Flying Scotsman
Mar 9: The US record industry reported that for the first time since 1987, sales of vinyl records exceeded CD sales
Apr 4: Finland officially joined Nato, becoming the 31st member of the security alliance
May 5: The World Health Organization ends its declaration of COVID-19 being a global health emergency

May 6: Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla

Aug 23: India lands an unmanned spacecraft near the south pole of the moon

Sep 28: Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian's Wall illegally felled
Oct 8: Israel formally declares war on Hamas in Gaza following their attack
Nov 1: Collins Dictionary announced “AI” as the most notable word in 2023
Nov 9: In the USA the world's first whole eye transplant succeeds

2024

Jan: Mr Bates vs The Post Office airs on ITV prompting new interest in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal
Mar: Last paper telephone directories issued in UK (began in 1880)

Apr 30: First failed asylum seeker sent from UK to Rwanda after he voluntarily agreed to go.
Jul 4: Landslide victory for Labour in the UK General Election
Jul 13: Failed assassination attempt on US Presidential candidate Donald Trump
Jul 29: Three girls are killed others injured in a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance in Southport
Sep: The new names of London's six Overground lines are Lioness, Mildmay, Windrush, Weaver, Suffragette and Liberty
Sep 30: Last coal-fired power station in the UK (at Ratcliffe-on-Soar) closes
Nov 5: Donald Trump re-elected as US President

Special Days in the Year

'Old Style' and 'New Style' dates - see 1582 and 1751. By the time the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain, it was 11 days 'ahead' of the old Julian calendar it replaced. Julian dates are termed 'Old Style' and Gregorian dates 'New Style'

• March 25 (Old Style) – Lady Day; first day of New Year from c150AD until 1751 – one of the Quarter Days in England when rents become due. Became April 6th (New Style), which is why our present Tax Year starts on this day! - Note method of remembering English Quarter days: last digit is the same as the number of letters in the month name [so March = 25, June = 24, September = 29] except for Christmas Day, which you just have to remember!
• Fourth Sunday in Lent – Mothering Sunday – simnel cake eaten
• Easter Sunday – the first Sunday after the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon on or after 21 March (the nominal Vernal Equinox) — thus earliest date for Easter is March 22 and latest is April 25.
• Second Monday & Tuesday after Easter – Hocktide – money collected for charitable purposes by men binding with cord any woman they met and receiving payment for release – women bound men on the next day.
• May 15
– Whitsunday as a Quarter Day in Scotland (legislatively fixed at May 15 for this purpose)
• June 24 – Midsummer's Day or St John's Day – one of the Quarter Days in England
• July 15 – St Swithun's Day
• August 1 [Aug 13 from 1753 onwards] – Lammas Day – Fences removed from common land which had been cultivated during the summer, and livestock permitted to graze over it till re-seeded again. An old Quarter Day in Scotland.
• Sept 29 – Michaelmas Day – one of the Quarter Days in England – termination date for men and women who had been hired as labourers and servants at the fairs the year before.
• Nov 11 – Martinmas – once a Quarter Day in Scotland.
• Dec 13 – St Lucy's Day – the shortest day before the new calendar was introduced.
• Dec 25 – Christmas Day – one of the Quarter Days in England – the old pagan feast of Saturnalia.
• Jan 5 – Twelfth Night.
• Monday after Jan 6th – Plough Monday – marked return to work after Christmas festivities.
• Feb 2 – Candlemas Day - one of the Quarter Days in Scotland.

John Owen Smith Home Page

Disclaimer . . .

I hope you find this list helpful and informative – even entertaining at times!

It represents the combined efforts of a number of contributors, but none of us would want you to think that it represents all the important events in British history, or have you believe that everything you read here is necessarily accurate or undisputed.

Nor, I might add, do we imply that all the inventions, etc, listed here are British ones – but it can be useful, for example, to know whether your ancestor (or the character in that historical novel which you're writing) could have been using a particular item at the time they were living. At least, I think so.

We have done our best, and hope that you will take the list in that spirit.
If you have any better information which you feel should be added, please let me know.

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Major Contributors to this list

• John Hitchcock – Victorian London Research
• Marina Alexander
• Iain Kerr – of Windsor, Berkshire
• Hilary Brookes – list as submitted to Yorksgen
• Bryan Wetton – Adelaide South Australia "A Southerner from the North"
• John Owen Smith – Home Page

• Headley village (example of a one-place study)
• On-line Bookshop (local history books, etc)
• Flora Thompson of 'Lark Rise to Candleford' fame (information site)
• Swing Riots of 1830 (as they affected Selborne and Headley in Hampshire, and beyond)