Chapter 3: History — Set 7

Newton's Principia, setting out the laws of motion and universal gravitation, was published in 1687, and the Authorised Version of the Bible appeared in 1611. Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the Middle Ages, centuries earlier, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was first compiled in the reign of Alfred the Great, in the 800s.

The Battle of Edgehill in Warwickshire, fought on 23 October 1642, was the first major battle of the war, and it ended without a clear winner.

Following the Royalist defeat at Worcester in 1651, Charles hid in an oak tree at Boscobel while Parliamentarian troops searched below - an episode remembered in the many 'Royal Oak' pub names.

Sir Robert Walpole, who led the government from 1721 to 1742, is generally regarded as the first holder of the office we now call Prime Minister - and he remains the longest-serving.

William Wilberforce led the parliamentary campaign against the slave trade for two decades, until it was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807.

The Iron Bridge was the first bridge in the world to be made of cast iron, using iron produced in the furnaces of nearby Coalbrookdale.

The Crystal Palace was designed by Joseph Paxton and put up in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the great showcase of industry and technology. It was not a Brunel design, and the Festival of Britain took place a hundred years later, in 1951.

The SS Great Britain was the first ocean-going ship to combine an iron hull with screw propulsion, and she was the largest passenger ship of her day.

Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in November 1859, presenting the evidence for evolution through natural selection that he had gathered over many years.

In 1876 Victoria took the title Empress of India, underlining the importance of India, the most valuable part of the British Empire.

Skara Brae is a Stone Age (Neolithic) village on Orkney, off Scotland's north coast. It is the best-preserved prehistoric village in northern Europe and shows how people lived towards the end of the Stone Age.

Jutland, fought in the North Sea in 1916, was the great clash between the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet.

Nancy Astor won a by-election in Plymouth in 1919 and became the first woman to sit as an MP. Constance Markievicz had been elected in 1918 but, as a Sinn Fein member, did not take her seat.

The D-Day landings in Normandy, the largest seaborne invasion in history, took place on 6 June 1944.

Victory in Europe Day was celebrated on 8 May 1945, marking the formal end of the war in Europe following Germany's surrender.

VJ Day (Victory over Japan Day) is marked on 15 August, the day in 1945 when Japan's surrender was announced, bringing the Second World War to an end.

The United Nations was founded in 1945, after the Second World War, to promote international peace and co-operation, with the United Kingdom among its founding members.

Aneurin ('Nye') Bevan, the Minister of Health in Attlee's Labour government, was the driving force behind the creation of the NHS in 1948.

The Festival of Britain took place in 1951, a century after the Great Exhibition, with its main site on the South Bank of the Thames in London.

Elizabeth II's coronation took place on 2 June 1953. She had become queen on her father's death in 1952, and the ceremony was televised to a huge audience.

Parliament's forces won decisive victories at Marston Moor (1644) and Naseby (1645). Charles I was captured, tried and executed in 1649 — the first English king put to death after a public trial — and England became a republic, the Commonwealth, with Oliver Cromwell later ruling as Lord Protector.

Decimal Day was 15 February 1971, when the old system of 20 shillings and 240 old pennies to the pound was replaced by 100 new pence.

The new Scottish Parliament met for the first time on 12 May 1999, almost 300 years after the old Parliament of Scotland had last sat before the Union of 1707.

Louise Brown, born at Oldham in July 1978, was the first baby in the world to be born after conception by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).