The first solo circumnavigation of the globe completed at Rhode island by Joshua Slocum in Spray (started from Boston, Mass on Apr 24, 1895)

USS Holland launched, the first practical submarine

First photograph using artificial light

Zeppelin builds airship

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company founded

Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector

Guglielmo Marconi receives a British patent (later disputed) for the radio

First modern Olympic Games held in Athens

X-rays discovered

First people in Britain to be charged with motor offences - John Henry Knight and James Pullinger of Farnham, Surrey

First recorded motor journey of any length (56 miles) in Britain

Oscar Wilde sent to prison

Henry Irving becomes the first person from the theatre to be knighted

The National Trust founded in England

Sir Henry Wood starts Promenade Concerts in London

Death duties first introduced in Britain

Tower Bridge first opens

Blackpool Tower opens

Picture postcard introduced in Britain

Manchester Ship Canal opens

Henry Ford's first car

Zip fastener invented

Alfred Lord Tennyson dies, aged 83, at his house Aldworth, near Haslemere

Electric oven invented

Shop Hours Act - limit 74 hours per week for under-18's

Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera

Fictional date when Sherlock Holmes throws Moriarty over Reichenbach Falls, then disappears for 3 years! (published in 1893)

First telephone link between London & Paris

Primary education made free and compulsory

City & South London Railway opens - London's first deep-level tube railway and first major railway in the world to use electric traction

Forth railway bridge opens - took six years to build

Length of a metre defined

Canadian Pacific Railway completed from coast to coast

Children's charity NSPCC launched in London

Eiffel Tower completed (to mark centenary of French Revolution)

Celluloid film produced

Dock Strike - docker's won their 'Docker's Tanner' 6 old pennies

Football League formed

Convention of Constantinople guarantees free maritime passage through Suez Canal in war and peace

Jack the Ripper active in east London during the latter half of the year

County Councils set up in Britain

Dunlop invents pneumatic tyre

First box camera - George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak, and receives a patent for his camera which uses roll film

Daimler produces a four-wheeled motor car

Putney Bridge opens in London

Pharmacist John Styth Pemberton invents a carbonated beverage later named 'Coca-Cola'

Mersey railway (under Mersey) opened by Prince of Wales

First electric tramcar used at Blackpool

The first train runs through the Severn Tunnel

First UK cremation in modern times took place at Woking

Carl Benz builds the 'Motorwagen', a single-cylinder motor car

Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle

Eastman makes first coated photographic paper

Canadian Pacific Railway completed

Greenwich made prime meridian of the world

John Harvey Kellogg patents corn flakes

Eruption of Krakatoa near Java - 30,000 killed by tidal wave

Parcel post starts in Britain

Brooklyn Bridge, New York opens (crosses East River)

Statue of Liberty presented to USA by France

Fourth Eddystone Lighthouse completed

Gunfight at OK Corral

Godalming in Surrey became the first town in England to have a public electricity supply installed (but in 1884 it reverted to gas lighting until 1904)

Postal Orders introduced

Flogging abolished in Army and Royal Navy

Greenwich Mean Time adopted throughout UK

Education Act: schooling compulsory for 5-10 year olds

Mosquito found to be the carrier of malaria

Blackpool illuminations switched on for first time

Edison & Swan invent electric lamp

Red Flag Act in Britain limits mechanical road vehicles to 4mph

CID established at New Scotland Yard

Edison invents microphone and phonograph