Useful dates in British history
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
- 20711
- 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
- 6857
- 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
- 865874
- 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 (56,000 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)
- 917921
- 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 Findl�ich) murders Duncan (Donnchad Mac
Cr�n�in) 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
- 10451050
- Building of Westminster Abbey consecrated 28
Dec 1065, only a week before Edward the Confessor's death and subsequent funeral
(rebuilt 12451517)
- 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 (114749)
- 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 (12171221)
- 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 (12281229)
- 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 (12481254)
- 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 Br�tigny 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 Waldseem�ller'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 Fran�ois 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 M�nster and Osnabr�ck 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
- 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 P�rignon
'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
(17751783)
- 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 2� 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 Andr�-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 Coru�a � 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 C�diz
- 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-Fran�ois 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 14� 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
- 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 Channel Islands 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 Bront� 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]
- 18578
- 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
- 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 Is�re)
- 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 (Path�tique), 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 F�in
- 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 July18 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 F�in 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 4Nov 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 33� 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 (CarlisleLiverpool)
- 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)
- 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 62�p 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: Eyjafjallaj�kull 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
- Feb 27: Age for marriage in England & Wales raised from
16 to 18 (remains 16 in Scotland)
- 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
- Nov 9: In the USA the world's first whole eye transplant succeeds
- 2024
- Mar: Last paper telephone directories issued in UK (began
in 1880)
'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
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.
Return to top
- 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
... and many others my thanks to you all!
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