Explore Orlando

Here, you’ll find randomized material from across the textbase’s author profiles and timelines. To jump to the content of your choice, click on its image card.

15 September 1924: The BBC began broadcasting in Belfast, Northern...

Building and people item

15 September 1924

The BBC began broadcasting in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Briggs, Asa. The BBC: The First Fifty Years. Oxford University Press, 1985.
366
Cathcart, Rex. The Most Contrary Region: The BBC in Northern Ireland 1924-1984. Blackstaff Press, 1984.
1

Later 1928: After the Representation of the People Act...

National or international item

Later 1928

After the Representation of the People Act made women electorally equal, Eva Hubback and Margery Corbett Ashby founded the National Union of Guilds for Citizenship (later the National Union of Townswomen's Guilds).
“Records of the Townswomen’s Guilds: Harrow on the Hill Branch”. AIM25: London Metropolitan University: Women’s Library.

1861: Queen's Institute, Dublin, was founded, mainly...

Building and people item

1861

Queen's Institute, Dublin, was founded, mainly through the efforts of Anne Jellicoe , for the technical instruction of women.
O’Connor, Anne V. “The Revolution in Girls’ Secondary Education in Ireland, 1860-1910”. Girls Don’t Do Honours: Irish Women in Education in the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Mary Cullen, Women’s Education Bureau, 1987, pp. 31-54.
33

10 April 1871: The Paris Commune, besieged by the national...

National or international item

10 April 1871

The Paris Commune, besieged by the national army, published its agenda for social justice. On the same day the guillotine, instrument of judicial capital punishment, was burned.
Marlière, Philippe. “Globalisation before Globalisation”. London Review of Books, Vol.
37
, No. 13, 2 July 2015, pp. 21-2.
20, 21

1769: Hannah Ballimg: move in unlikely event of...

Building and people item

1769

Hannah Ball opened an early Methodist Sunday school at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.
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.
Feminist Companion Archive.

By 14 July 1883: Bertha Thomas contributed a biography of...

Women writers item

By 14 July 1883

Bertha Thomas contributed a biography of George Sand to the Eminent Women series.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2907 (1883): 44
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.

Frances Browne

FB published from the mid to the late nineteenth century, arousing public interest on account of her blindness. Having begun with poetry, she became best known for fiction—novels and short stories for children and adults—and...
Frances Browne Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Frances Browne, shown at a three quarter turn. She is wearing a dark jacket with a white collar outside it, and large silver hoop earrings. Her straight hair is pulled back and hangs in a long plait down one side.

1799: The Evangelical movement founded the Religious...

National or international item

1799

The Evangelical movement founded the Religious Tract Society , with the object of publishing texts for the salvation of sinners.
Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians. Jonathan Cape, 1976.
42-3, 36

1878: Domestic Economy was made a compulsory specific...

National or international item

1878

Domestic Economy was made a compulsory specific subject in national elementary education for girls.
Purvis, June. A History of Women’s Education in England. Open University Press, 1991.
26-7

1896: Hyde Park was opened to bicycle traffic;...

Building and people item

1896

Hyde Park was opened to bicycle traffic; at this height of the craze, William Whiteley's sold an inventory of 500 bicycles in days.
Adburgham, Alison. Shops and Shopping 1800-1914: Where, and in What Manner the Well-Dressed Englishwoman Bought Her Clothes. Allen and Unwin, 1964.
229

January-December 1865: Charles Kingsley's last novel Hereward the...

Writer or writing item

January-December 1865

Charles Kingsley 's last novel Hereward the Wake, was serialised as Hereward, The Last of the English in Good Words.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
293, 335

From about 1770: The woollen industry of Yorkshire, centred...

Building and people item

From about 1770

The woollen industry of Yorkshire, centred in Halifax, Wakefield, and Leeds, was increasingly dominated by the use of machinery.
Raven, James. Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750-1800. Clarendon, 1992.
119

Earlier 1981: Merseyside county councillor Margaret Simey,...

Building and people item

Earlier 1981

Merseyside county councillor Margaret Simey , already an activist on behalf of poor communities, became chairman of the Liverpool police authority not long before the Toxteth race riots broke out.
Clarke, Raymond. “Margaret Simey”. The Guardian, 29 July 2004, p. 29.
29

1 June 1900: At Kiowa, Kansas, USA, Carrie or Carry A....

Building and people item

1 June 1900

At Kiowa, Kansas, USA, Carrie or Carry A. Nation began the campaign for Prohibition by breaking up saloons.
Williams, Neville et al. Chronology of the 20th Century. Helicon, 1996.
3
Carry A. Nation: Historical Marker in Kiowa, Barber County, Kansas, USA. http://skyways.lib.ks.us/history/cnation.html.

By 18 May 1844: Benjamin Disraeli published Coningsby, the...

Writer or writing item

By 18 May 1844

Benjamin Disraeli published Coningsby, the first book of the Young England trilogy for which he is best known, and an example of the social problem novel.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
864 (1844): 446
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

Elizabeth Ashbridge

EA was an early eighteenth-century Quaker minister whose preaching was highly valued and who wrote her life-story for the edification of others.
Elizabeth Ashbridge Colour photograph of the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Middlewich, Cheshire. Elizabeth Ashbridge worshipped here until her runaway teenage marriage in 1728.

Sybille Bedford

SB was a largely twentieth-century writer who worked on the boundaries between fiction and fact. Her three initial novels (which create fictional characters partly from people in Bedford's own family or circle, and which evoke...

May 1888: Josephine Butler edited, in London, the first...

Building and people item

May 1888

Josephine Butler edited, in London, the first issue of The Dawn: An Occasional/Quarterly/ Sketch of the Progress of the Work of the British, Continental and General Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation...

14 March 1733: Sir Robert Walpole first proposed the immensely...

National or international item

14 March 1733

Sir Robert Walpole first proposed the immensely controversial Excise Bill.
Sedgwick, Romney. The House of Commons, 1715-1754. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1970.
1: 1-2

Between 1788 and 1792: The historian Edward Gibbon composed no less...

Writer or writing item

Between 1788 and 1792

The historian Edward Gibbon composed no less than six drafts of his autobiography, which remained unpublished during his lifetime.
Pocock, John Greville Agard. “The Ironist”. London Review of Books, 14 Nov. 2002, pp. 13-17.
15

April 1637: Alexander Henderson of Leuchars, a godly...

National or international item

April 1637

Alexander Henderson of Leuchars, a godly leader of the Scottish Kirk , held a secret meeting with a group of Edinburgh matrons to enlist their aid in resistance against the imposition of the new (...

December 1985: Science writer John Langone argued in Discoverer...

Building and people item

December 1985

Science writer John Langone argued in Discoverer that women were not normally at risk from AIDS, since the vagina is rugged although the anus is fragile.
Koelsch, Patrice Clark. “Mortal Combats”. Women’s Review of Books, Vol.
xvii
, No. 6, Mar. 2000, pp. 18-20.
18-19

12 July 1799: The Combination Act prohibited all combinations...

National or international item

12 July 1799

The Combination Act prohibited all combinations (of employers as well as of workers); those accused under it were deprived of the right to trial by jury.
Goodwin, Albert. The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. Hutchinson, 1979.
455, 464

20 August 1968: An uprising in Prague (sometimes later referred...

National or international item

20 August 1968

An uprising in Prague (sometimes later referred to as the Prague Spring) was suppressed by the military power of the USSR, whose tanks crossed the border on this day.
“Europe Remembering the Prague Spring”. BBC News, 21 Aug. 1998.

11 December 1957: The first European School opened in a new...

Building and people item

11 December 1957

The first European School opened in a new building constructed in the shape of a giant E, in the Boulevard de la Foire in Luxembourg. It aimed to impart an international education, and half...