AD 43: Roman conquest of Britain. Aulus Plautius leads an army of forty thousand to invade Great Britain. Emperor Claudius makes Britain a part of the Roman Empire.
AD 61 (or 60):The Battle of Watling Street. An alliance of indigenous British peoples led by Boudica are defeated decisively by the heavily outnumbered Romans. The battle marked the end of resistance to Roman rule in Britain in the southern half of the island, a period that lasted until 410 AD.
793: The Vikings raid Lindisfarne. It's the start of the Viking Age in England.
878: Alfred the Great wins a decisive victory in the Battle of Edington. An agreement was made with the Vikings, creating what was known as Danelaw in the North of England.
1066: Battle of Hastings: William The Conqueror defeats Harold Godwinson. England's remaining forces were defeated by invaders in which is known as the Norman Conquest.
William the Conqueror is crowned king of England on Christmas Day 1066 - the English language and culture is changed.
1086: Work started on the Domesday Book. A "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror.
1215: The Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede, near Windsor. A charter of rights agreed to by King John.
1282: Llywelyn, the last sovereign prince of Wales before its conquest by Edward I of England is killed in an ambush.
1298:: The Battle of Falkirk is one of the major battles in the First War of Scottish Independence. Led by King Edward I of England, the English army defeated the Scots, led by William Wallace.
1305: Sir William Wallace is executed in London.
1314: Battle of Bannockburn in which Scotland led by Robert the Bruce wins a decisive victory over England.
1346: The Plague (Black Death) arrives in England. Well over a quarter of the population are believed to have died, devastating villages and towns. The plague had profound impact on society - leading to relative peace for a time and providing wage rises to surviving peasants - paving the way to the Peasants Revolt and helping to end serfdom.
1337: Start of The Hundred Years War. It lasted for 116 years. It was fought over the right to rule the Kingdom of France by The House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the French House of Valois.
1346:A decisive victory for an English army led by King Edward III in The Battle of Crecy. It was at this battle that England became a continental power. The longbow was the dominant weapon; it took up to 10 years to master and could discharge up to ten arrows per minute well over 300 metres.
1381: The Peasants' Revolt. The first great popular rebellion in English history, led by Wat Tyler during the reign of Richard II. Its immediate cause was the imposition of the poll tax. Tyler was killed by the Mayor of London during negotiations at Smithfield, London.
1415: Battle of Agincourt. A major English victory in the Hundred Years' War that occurred on Saint Crispin's Day.
1440 The Gutenberg Printing Press. Perhaps the most important invention of the last 2,000 years.
1453 The Battle of Castillon. A decisive French victory and considered to mark the end of the Hundred Years' War. The English lose all lands in France, except Calais.
1455: The Wars of the Roses begins at The First Battle of St Albans. It's fought between the two houses of York and Lancaster. After the removal of King Henry VI, the country faced three decades of rebellion and plotting.
1476: William Caxton is thought to be the first person to introduce the printing press to England. The first book he is known to have produced was an edition of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
1485: Battle of Bosworth Field. The last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses. Richard III, the last Plantagenet king was killed and succeeded by Henry VII (the first monarch of the House of Tudor).
1536-1541 The Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII.
1564: William Shakespeare Is Born. Over 1,000 words in the English language are used today because of William Shakespeare,
1587: Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Fotheringay Castle, near Peterborough.
1588: The Spanish Armada was destroyed.
1603: Death of Elizabeth I.
1605: The Gunpowder Plot: An uncovered plot led by Robert Catesby in which Guy Fawkes and other Catholics conspired to blow up The Protestant King James I and Parliament.
1620:The Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, on 6 September 1620 and arrived at Cape Cod on 9 November 1620, after a 66 day voyage.
1642Sir Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day. One of the most influential scientists of all time.
1642: The English Civil War began. The war ended with Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.
1649: King Charles I executed for treason, outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London.
1665-66: The Great Plague was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It killed almost a quarter of London's population in 18 months.
1666: Great Fire of London (2–5 September). Started in Pudding Lane and swept through the central parts of London.
1688-1689: The Glorious Revolution replaced the reigning king, James II, with the joint monarchy of his protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange. It was the keystone moment of the Whig (those opposed to a Catholic succession) history of Britain.
1692: The massacre of Glencoe – Clan Campbell sides with King William and murders members of Clan McDonald.
1707: The Acts of Union 1707 were passed in the Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland, ratifying the Treaty of Union. The Kingdom of Great Britain came into being.
1739-1748: The War of Jenkins' Ear was a conflict between Britain and Spain lasting from 1739 to 1748, with major operations largely ended by 1742. Its unusual name was coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1858, and relates to the captain of a British merchant ship named Robert Jenkins who had his ear severed following the boarding of his vessel by Spanish coast guards in 1731.
1775: Start of the American War of Independence. American War of Independence ends with The Treaty of Paris in 1783.
1789: Start of the French Revolution. A period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France lasting 10 years.
1805: Naval Battle of Trafalgar. Twenty-seven British ships led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard HMS Victory defeat thirty-three French and Spanish ships.
1815: The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in Belgium. The allied forces led by the Duke of Wellington, who descibred the battle as 'a damned close-run thing', defeats Napoleon's imperial amibitions.
1834: 'Tolpuddle Martyrs'. Six agricultural labourers from the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset, are transported to Australia for Trades Union activities.
1837: Reign of Queen Victoria begins. The start of the Victorian Age.
1851: The Great Exhibition takes place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. It was the first in a series of exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century.
1854: The Battle of Balaclava, fought on 25 October 1854 during the Crimean War (1853 to 1856).
1861-1865: The American Civil War, fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North (Union) and the South (Confederacy). Slavery is abolished by the 13th Amendment in the United States of America in 1865.
1901: Death of Queen Victoria. End of Victorian Age.
1912: RMS Titanic sinks after hitting an iceberg. More than 1500 people die.
1914-18: World War One. Called the Great War. No one during that time could imagine anything worse.
1929: The Wall Street Crash.
1939-1945: World War Two. For the first time everyday people were affected by aerial warfare. Britain faced heavy losses, air raids, rationing and other hardships during the long years of war.
December 7, 1941: The Attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy upon the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii.
1950 – 1953: The Korean War.
1965: Death of Churchill.
July 20, 1969: Man lands on the moon. Apollo 11. Commander Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins (who remained in lunar orbit in the mission's command module).
1975: End of Vietnam War.
1982: The Falklands War. The war lasts 10 weeks. The nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror sinks General Belgrano.
1986: Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.
1989: Tim Berners-Lee Invents The World Wide Web.
1997: Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a Paris car accident.