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By 22 March 1780
The British government raised its tax on newspaper advertising by an extra sixpence per notice: this probably deterred many publishers and authors from advertising new books.
Spring 1946
Violet Markham chaired a radio discussion insisting domestic work was uniquely feminine and required proper training.
1986
The Women's Press published the feministscience fictionnovelQueen of the States by Josephine Saxton .
June 1973
A power-sharing assembly was elected in Northern Ireland, but its first sitting, the following month, was disrupted by Ian Paisley and his followers.
August 1791
Parliament debated the Sierra Leone Bill: Sierra Leone in West Africa (where an attempt to establish free black settlers had failed) was designated an asylum for emancipated slaves, organized by British Evangelicals.
3 November 1978
Dominica became independent from Britain.
Early November 1959
The first significant stretch of motorway in Britain was opened: the M1, running northwards from London, successor to the Great North Road.
3 September 1658
Oliver Cromwell died and Richard Cromwell became Lord Protector of Great Britain and Ireland.
1839-41
The standard translation of the Arabian Nights, made by Edward William Lane and issued in instalments, appeared in three massive volumes.
18 March 1958
The attendance of debutantes at Court for formal presentation to the Queen took place for the final time.
1910
Kathleen Ainslie published Votes for Catherine, Susan and Me, a children's book which is also anti-suffragepropaganda.
By 1859
Aniline dyes (discovered three years before) were introduced in manufacturing; clothing brightened considerably.
1681-5
Of 217 Catholic estates sequestered during the last four years of Charles II 's reign, over half were worth less than £100.

Helen Craik

During the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, HC wrote both poetry and novels. Her fiction included some historical and some contemporary works.

Aldous Huxley

In addition to Brave New World, 1932, one of the most famous dystopian novels of the twentieth century, AH penned more than forty other novels, often satirical, frequently mystical, that confront the dogmas, idiosyncrasies...
1726
The University of Edinburgh established a medical faculty and the first chair of obstetrics in Great Britain.
27 January 1839
Charter newspaper began publication in London.
January 1975
The first home computer appeared on the market in the USA: the MITS Altair 8800, selling at $395 in the form of a kit for home assembly.
Late March 1673
The Test Act barred from office (even local office) anyone who declined to take the sacrament of the Church of England and an oath against the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation.
1822
Drury Lane Theatre was closed for a complete internal overhaul.
1995
Marie Curie became the first woman honoured by burial as a national figure in the Panthéon in Paris.
1749
The philosopheBuffon began publishing his Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, one of the great Enlightenment collaborative projects for the advancement of learning.
31 October 1517
Luther pinned his manifesto (Ninety-Five Theses) to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg in Germany. The theses were intended points for a university discussion which in the event never took place.
1826
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded by Lord Brougham .
6 April 1847
Covent Garden Theatre re-opened (with a performance of Rossini 's Semiramide) as The Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden .
Autumn1498
One of the best-known poems of John Skelton , The Bowge of Courte, probably dates from this season. It was printed by Wynkyn de Worde the following year.
1790
Newspaper sales in England totalled more than 16 million.
6 November 1860
Oil was struck at the first Canadian oil well, sunk at Petrolia, Ontario.
About 1885
Tolbert Lanston patented the Monotype ™ system for book typesetting.
1 January 1841
The Total Abstinence Charter Association , one of many societies linking working-class political activism and temperance reform, was formed in Leeds.
21 March 1918
German forces launched their Great Offensive, an all-out attack on the Western Front before the USA could get troops moved in.
1828
Andrew Halliday argued that because England was the most civilized, industrialized and advanced country in the world, it also exhibited the highest incidence of insanity.
Photograph of a black and white print of Anne Sexton. She is shown from the shoulders up, with her head resting on her hand, and she has jaw-length hair that is filled in with black.

Anne Sexton

AS , American poet of the mid twentieth century, flirted for most of her adult life with the idea of killing herself. Her poems are intensely personal, centred on death, as well as on psychic...
28 June 1905
Sailors on the Russian battleship Potemkin mutinied. The ship was lying in port at Odessa, now in Ukraine.
3 February 1731
The Daily Advertiser was launched in London: one of four newspapers (only two dailies) which dominated publishers' book advertising until nearly the century's end.
20 February 1878
Following the death of Pius IX , Leo XIII was elected Pope.
1992
Salisbury cathedral brought in an all-girl choir. It was the first cathedral to do so.
Between December 1981 and summer 1985
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked the advance of AIDS in that country, from 152 cases in late 1981 to over 12,000 cases in mid 1985.
1856
The first thread sewing machine for bookbinding was invented by David McConnell Smyth of Hartford, Connecticut.
February 1921
Car manufacturer Henry Ford published two antisemitic essays in his company newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, about the supposed control exercised by Jews over the movie industry.
1788
The Philanthropic Society was founded (to reform criminal children).
2 May 1932
Broadcasting House at Portland Place, London, opened as home of the British Broadcasting Corporation .

André Gide

AG was a French novelist, playwright, diarist, autobiographer, essayist, and founder of an influential literary magazine. He also wrote controversial works on sexuality and colonialism. He began publishing in the last decade of the nineteenth...
July 1867
The Association for Promoting the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1866 to the Civilian Population was founded.
October 1794
The The Free-Masons's Magazine carried a fiercely anti-slavery poem by someone calling herself Clorinda: An Elegy to the Island of Jamaica.
26 September 1879
The London King's Cross to Leeds train service installed its first regular restaurant car.
1860
Charles Frederick Worth introduced in Paris a short crinoline for walking which exposed the wearer's ankles.
1900
Gertrude Jekyll published her influential, highly personal Home and Garden, which describes the creation of her famous cottage garden at Munstead Wood in Surrey.
1839
The Microscopical Society of London (later the Royal Microscopical Society) was founded by, among others, Nathaniel Ward , inventor of the Wardian (fern) case.
25 July 1968
Less than two months into his pontificate, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae on The Regulation of Birth, reaffirming the Roman Catholic Church 's anti-contraceptive position.