Chapter 3: History — Set 8

Admiral Lord Nelson commanded the British fleet at Trafalgar in 1805, defeating the combined French and Spanish fleets, but he was fatally wounded during the fighting.

Napoleon was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 by forces commanded by the Duke of Wellington, working with Prussian allies.

Lady Jane Grey is known as the 'Nine Days' Queen' — she was proclaimed queen in July 1553 but was deposed after only nine days when support swung to Mary I.

On his first voyage Cook charted the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, greatly improving European maps of the Pacific. He did not chart India or Canada on that voyage.

The Rocket, built by George and Robert Stephenson, won the Rainhill Trials in 1829 and became the model for later steam locomotives on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

Mary was executed in 1587, after many years as Elizabeth I's prisoner in England and after becoming implicated in plots against Elizabeth. She was not executed in 1588 — that was the year of the Spanish Armada.

Millicent Fawcett's Suffragists campaigned peacefully and lawfully for decades, using petitions and persuasion — unlike the Suffragettes, who turned to militant tactics.

The 1918 Act gave the vote to almost all men aged 21 and over, sweeping away most of the old property qualifications, as well as enfranchising women over 30 who met a property test.

Conscription was introduced for the first time in Britain by the Military Service Act of 1916, after voluntary recruitment could no longer meet the army's needs.

Returning from Munich in 1938, Neville Chamberlain claimed his agreement with Hitler meant 'peace for our time'; within a year Britain and Germany were at war.

El Alamein, fought in Egypt in 1942, halted the Axis advance in North Africa and marked a major turning point of the war in Britain's favour.

The BBC was founded in 1922 and began daily radio broadcasts from London that year; it later became a public corporation under a royal charter.

George VI died in February 1952 and was succeeded by his elder daughter, Elizabeth II, who was crowned the following year, in 1953.

In the 1975 referendum — two years after joining — voters chose by about two to one to stay in the European Community.

The miners' strike of 1984–85 pitted the National Union of Mineworkers against Margaret Thatcher's government over plans to close uneconomic coal pits.

Tony Blair led Labour to a landslide victory in 1997 and became Prime Minister, with his party presenting itself as 'New Labour'.

In 1642 Parliament, dominated by Puritans who disapproved of stage plays, ordered the London theatres to close; they stayed shut throughout the Civil War and Commonwealth years.

The Royal Society was founded in London in 1660, shortly after the Restoration, to promote scientific experiment and discussion.

Newton's Principia (1687) set out his three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, transforming the scientific understanding of the universe.

George I was Elector of Hanover in Germany and inherited the British throne in 1714 under the Act of Settlement because he was the nearest Protestant heir.

Raising the royal standard at Nottingham in August 1642 was Charles I's formal call to arms and is traditionally taken as the start of the Civil War.

The Puritan Parliament of the 1640s and 1650s banned Christmas celebrations, regarding them as frivolous and unbiblical; the festivities returned after the Restoration in 1660.

The false statement is the one about land ownership: in the feudal system the king owned all the land, and granted it to his barons, who passed some to knights below them, each man owing loyalty and service to the lord above him. The other statements are all true — King John sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, limiting royal power, and William the Conqueror's Domesday survey was completed in 1086.

The Acts of Union 1800, effective from 1 January 1801, united Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.