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25 July 1834: The Superannuation Act legalized deductions...

Building and people item

25 July 1834

The Superannuation Act legalized deductions from the salaries of all Civil Servants to pay for pensions that could be claimed before the age of sixty-five (though retirement was not yet mandatory) only by those retiring...

12 June 1701: Important constitutional principles were...

National or international item

12 June 1701

Important constitutional principles were laid down in the Settlement Act or Act of Settlement. This formalised the outcome of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9 (dashing the hopes of Jacobites), and placed the monarch in a...

January 1967: The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association...

National or international item

January 1967

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was founded, with an eye to the long-standing discrimination exercised by Northern Ireland Unionists against Roman Catholics (and to the gains won by the US Civil Rights movement).
“Northern Ireland Civil Rights’ Movement”. BBC: History: Wars and Conflict: The Troubles: Origins/Civil Rights.

Mary Masters

MM was a self-taught poet, probably born at the end of the seventeenth century, who wrote from inclination and published because she needed the money. Her feminist opinions (expressed mainly in letters) are those current...
Mary Masters A photograph of four lines of a poem by Mary Masters, written in an early, unidentified hand, beginning: "Tis religion that can give / S[w]eetest pleasure while we Live . . . ."

1965: Ted Nelson first used the term hypertext...

Building and people item

1965

Ted Nelson first used the term hypertext to refer to nonsequentially navigable information systems.
Moschovitis, Christos et al. History of the Internet. ABC-CLIO, 1999.
53-4

Mary Jones

MJ , writing in the mid and later eighteenth century, is remarkable for publishing her work, although it was written in a private context. She is still under-rated both as a poet and as a letter-writer.
Mary Jones Title-page of Mary Jones's "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse", published with her name at Oxford, 1750.

4 May 1926: The South African parliament passed the Colour...

National or international item

4 May 1926

The South African parliament passed the Colour Bar bill, restricting certain occupations to white persons only.
Keller, Helen, editor. The Dictionary of Dates. Macmillan, 1934, 2 vols.
I: 718

20-21 May 1932: Amelia Earhart, in a Lockheed Vega, became...

National or international item

20-21 May 1932

Amelia Earhart , in a Lockheed Vega, became the first woman to make a solo Atlantic crossing.
Rich, Doris L. Amelia Earhart : a biography. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
132-4
Gibbs-Smith, Charles Harvard. Aviation: An Historical Survey from its Origins to the end of World War II. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1970.
249
Bruno, Leonard. On the Move: A Chronology of Advances in Transportation. Gale Research, 1993.
219
Trager, James. The Women’s Chronology: A Year-by-Year Record, from Prehistory to the Present. Henry Holt, 1994.
468

1790: The St George's Day Association was formed...

National or international item

1790

The St George's Day Association was formed with the dual intention of suppressing the slave trade and introducing Christianity and civilization to West Africa. The following year it changed its name to the Sierra Leone Company

December 1898: The monthly London Society published its...

Writer or writing item

December 1898

The monthly London Society published its final issue.
Cooke, Simon. “London Society”. The Victorian Web, 26 Mar. 2013.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
381
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

Charlotte Dempster

In a writing career that lasted almost thirty years of the later nineteenth century, CD published six novels, numerous essays (some of which she re-issued in a collection), a travel-narrative, a cookbook, and a devotional...

Annie Besant

AB is known primarily for two streams of non-fiction writing, one concerning birth control and the other the Theosophist movement. However, this omits much of the remarkable output whose topics ranged from women's rights and...
Annie Besant Photograph of Annie Besant looking directly at the camera with her right hand over her chest. She has a serious expression and is wearing a white high frill-collared dress with possibly a shawl over it. She has two rings on her visible right hand. She has blonde hair and it is in an updo.

1 August 1914: The First World War (not called that for...

National or international item

1 August 1914

The First World War (not called that for more than a generation later) began when Germany declared war on Russia. Britain's entry into the war came three days later.
Spartacus Educational. 28 Feb. 2003, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/.

April 1883: The Church of England Purity Society was...

Building and people item

April 1883

The Church of England Purity Society was founded at Lambeth Palace in London; its first president was Archbishop Benson .
Bristow, Edward. Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain Since 1700. Gill and Macmillan, 1977.
102
Bristow, Edward. Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain Since 1700. Gill and Macmillan, 1977.
100

20 September 1523: Argula von Grumbach, a Bavarian whom many...

Writer or writing item

20 September 1523

Argula von Grumbach , a Bavarian whom many call the earliest Protestant woman writer, penned two polemical letters which were later published (one to the University of Ingolstadt and one to Duke William IV of Bavaria

1774: The British Novelist: Or, Virtue and Vice...

Writer or writing item

1774

The British Novelist: Or, Virtue and Vice in Miniature was published in twelve volumes of abridged texts by Sarah and Henry Fielding , Richardson , Smollett , and Lennox .
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

1792: The New Bristol Directory, for the Year 1792...

Building and people item

1792

The New Bristol Directory, for the Year 1792 listed 53 women as lodging-house keepers.
Hunt, Margaret R. The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680-1780. University of California Press, 1996.
267n10

11 September 1801: Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller's...

Writer or writing item

11 September 1801

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller 's tragedy Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) was first produced, in Leipzig, with tremendous success.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
94

7 June 1665: Pepys, on the hottest day that I have ever...

National or international item

7 June 1665

Pepys , on the hottest day that I have ever felt in my life, had his first sight of a red cross painted on the doors of several houses to say they were plague-stricken.
Todd, Janet. The Secret Life of Aphra Behn. Rutgers University Press, 1997.
73-4

1897: Miss I. Stansfield was appointed Assistant...

Building and people item

1897

Miss I. Stansfield was appointed Assistant Poor Law Inspector, the first woman to hold the post.
Martindale, Hilda. Women Servants of the State, 1870-1938: A History of Women in the Civil Service. G. Allen and Unwin , 1938.
34

By 15 December 1877: Mary Hoppus's first novel, Five-Chimney Farm,...

Women writers item

By 15 December 1877

Mary Hoppus 's first novel, Five-Chimney Farm, was published, under her married name of Mary A. Marks.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2616 (1877): 769
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

27 April 1795: Elizabeth Edmead, an actress at the Theatre...

Women writers item

27 April 1795

Elizabeth Edmead , an actress at the Theatre Royal , Norwich, had her Serious DramaThe Events of a Day performed there with great success, judging from the reviews.
Chandler, David. “’The Athens of England’: Norwich as a Literary Center in the Late Eighteenth Century”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
43
, No. 2, 1 Dec.–28 Feb. 2010, pp. 171-92.
182

1937: In India the Congress Party, which favoured...

National or international item

1937

In India the Congress Party , which favoured independence from Britain and was largely backed by Hindus, swept to power in elections, even in some Muslim-majority areas.
Ali, Tariq. “Bitter Chill of Winter”. London Review of Books, 19 Apr. 2001, pp. 18-27.
21

1740: The Académie Française authorised a new and...

Writer or writing item

1740

The Académie Française authorised a new and reformed version of French orthography, a step away from fossilised traces of classical derivations, and towards a phonetic spelling.
Goodman, Dena. Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters. Cornell University Press, 2009.
126

28 March 1849: The Frankfurt Assembly elected Prussia's...

National or international item

28 March 1849

The Frankfurt Assembly elected Prussia's King Frederick William IV as Emperor of Germany.
Cowie, Leonard W., and Leonard Woolfson. Years of Nationalism: European History 1815-1890. Edward Arnold, 1985.
176
Sheehan, James J. “The German States and the European Revolution”. Revolution and the Meanings of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Isser Woloch, Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 246-79.
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