by Tot Taylor
1612
October 23, Gerard dies in London
1612
December 28, Galileo records Neptune as an ‘eigth-magnitude star’
1614
January 1, John Wilkins, clergyman and founder of the Royal Society, born in Fawsley, Northamptonshire
1615
April 11, Donne made Doctor of Divinity, Cambridge University
1616
February 24, in Rome, the Sacred Congregation of the Index condemns the Copernican system
1618
May 27, Kepler completes Harmonies of the World
1621
Kepler publishes Epitome Astronomiae
1621
Donne becomes Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral
1621
The first botanic garden, the Oxford Physick Garden, founded in England
1624
Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, Louis XIV’s gardener, born at Chabanais, France
1625
Milton attends Christ’s College, Cambridge
1627
Kepler publishes his Rudolphine Tables
1627
November 29, John Ray born in Black Notley, Essex
1629
Parkinson publishes Paradise on Earth, the first modern gardening book
1629
July 28, Speed dies in Cripplegate, London
1630
Tradescant the Younger appointed ‘Keeper of His Majesty’s Gardens’
1630
November 15, Kepler dies in Regensburg, Germany
1631
March 31, Donne dies in London
1632
Galileo publishes his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Ptolemy and Copernicus)
1632
August 29, John Locke born in Wrington, Somerset
1633
Thomas Johnson revises and enlarges Gerard’s Herball
1635
John Bate publishes The Mysteries of Art and Nature (the book pored over by the young Isaac Newton)
1638
Galileo publishes Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, (the genesis of modern physics)
1638
John Wilkins publishes The Discovery of a World in the Moon
1640
John Parkinson publishes his Theatre of Plants, describing more than 3,000 plants
1642
January 8, Galileo dies in Florence, Italy
1642
Christmas Day, Issac Newton born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire
1644
John Ray attends Catherine Hall, Cambridge, (then Trinity College)
1646
John Falmsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, born in Dewby, Derbyshire
1648
John Wilkins publishes Mathematical Magick
1656
July 4, John Parkinson dies in London
1656
November 8, Edmond Halley born in Haggerston, Middlesex
1657
John Milton begins work on Paradise Lost
1659
John Wilkins becomes Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
1661
June 5, Isaac Newton attends Trinity College, Cambridge
1662
April 22, Tradescant the Younger dies in London
1663
Newton buys book on astrology at Sturbridge Fair, Cambridge
1663
Wilkins elected Fellow of the Royal Society
1664
John Forster publishes England’s Happiness Increased
1665
Newton leaves Cambridge to escape the Great Plague
1666
John Calve publishes his Survey of Kernow (Cornwall)
1668
Newton invents the reflecting telescope
1669
Newton elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, aged 27
1669
Ray contributes the ‘Table of Plants’ to Wilkins’ Essay Towards Real Character the first systematic work in botany published in England
1670
Flamsteed attends Jesus College, Cambridge
1672
November 16, Wilkins dies in Chester, Derbyshire
1674
November 8, Milton dies in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire
1678
de La Quintinie designs the Potager du Roi gardens at Versailles
1680
Flamsteed publishes Doctrine of the Sphere
1686
Ray publishes his Historia Plantarum
1686
Newton presents his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Book 1), to the Royal Society (publication paid for by Halley)
1688
November 11, de La Quintinie dies at Versailles
1689
Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is published
1690
The Spoure Book is published
1692
Newton suffers nervous breakdown
1693
March 24, John Harrison born in Foulby, Yorkshire
1695
November 10, John Bevis born in Old Sarum, Wiltshire
1699
March 23, John Bartram, ‘America’s first botanist’ born in Darby, Pennsylvania
1703
June 28, John Wesley born in Epworth, Lincolnshire
1703
Newton elected President of the Royal Society
1703
John Broughton becomes the first to use the word ‘psychology’ (in his book Psychologia: the nature of the rational soul).
1704
Newton publishes Opticks
1704
October 28, Locke dies in Oates, Essex
1705
January 17, Ray dies in Black Notley, Essex
1705
Newton becomes the first scientist to be knighted
1705
Newton’s Cambridge lectures (1673– 1683) published
1707
December 18, Charles Wesley born in Epworth, Lincolnshire
1715
May 3, ‘the most celebrated eclipse ever seen in England’ passes over Cornwall
1717
Harrison becomes choirmaster and bell tuner at St Saviours Church, Barrow-upon-Humber
1719
December 13, Flamsteed dies in Burstow, Surrey
1724
John Michell, geologist and astronomer, born in Nottinghamshire (date unknown)
1727
March 31, Sir Isaac Newton dies in Kensington, London
1729
John Flamsteed’s Atlas Coelestis published posthumously
1732
October 6, John Broadwood, piano manufacturer and innovator born Berwickshire
1738
John Bevis sets up private observatory at Stoke Newington
1738
John Wesley publishes A Collection of Psalms and Hymns
1740
Expansion of deep copper mining in Cornwall heralds the Industrial Revolution in Britain
1742
January 14, Edmond Halley dies in London
1744
John Claridge (the Shepherd of Banbury) publishes his Rules to Judge the Changes of the Weather
1748
Bevis produces his Uranographia Britannica
1749
Michell attends Queen’s College, Cambridge
1752
January 18, John Nash born in Lambeth, London
1753
September 10, John Swan ‘John Soane’, born in Goring-on-Thames
1761
Michell elected Member of the Royal Society
1761
Harrison invents the H4 marine chronometer
1767
John Pond born in London (date unknown)
1770
Harrison publishes Concerning Such Mechanism, on the manufacture and tuning of bells
1771
November 6, Bevis dies in London from i
njuries received when working in his observatory
1773
August 22, John Wesley preaches to 20,000 miners and fisherman at Gwennap pit, Redruth, Cornwall
1776
March 24, Harrison dies in Red Lion Square, London
1776
June 11, John Constable born in East Bergholt, Suffolk.
1777
September 23, John Bartram dies in Kingsessing, Pennsylvania
1780
John Wesley publishes A Collection of Hymns for the Use of People called Methodists’ (‘a little body of experimental and practical Divinity’)
1783
Michell describes Black Holes (‘dark stars’) in a paper to the Royal Society
1786
John Bevis’ Uranographia Britannica published as Atlas Celeste
1788
March 29, Charles Wesley dies in Marylebone, London
1791
March 2, Wesley dies in London
1793
April 21, Michell dies in Thornhill, Yorkshire
1793
July 13, John Clare born in Helpstone, Northamptonshire
1795
October 31, John Keats born in Moorfields, London
1799
February 8, John Lindley, botanist, born in Catton, Norwich
1800
February 19, Constable attends the Royal Academy Schools, London
1810
March 1, Frederich Chopin born Zalazowa Wola, Poland
1811
October 27, Franz Liszt born in Raiding, Austria
1811
Nash maps out his design for Marylebone Park (Regent’s Park), London
1812
July 17, John Broadwood dies in London
1815
June 5, John Couch Adams born in Laneast, Cornwall
1818
Nash builds his ‘garden city’ from St James’s to Regent’s Park
1820
December 18, John Constable begins work on The Hay Wain in London
1821
February 23, John Keats dies, aged 25, in Rome
1821
September 12, Charles Wheatstone exhibits The Enchanted Lyre
1821
John Clare publishes The Village Minstrel
1827
John Clare publishes The Shepherd’s Calendar
1833
May 7, Johannes Brahms born in Hamburg, Germany
1833
November 12, Alexander Borodin born in St Petersburg, Russia
1834
Lindley the father of modern orchidology', publishes Ladies’ Botany
1835
May 13, John Nash dies at East Cowes, Isle of Wight
1836
September 7, Pond dies in Blackheath, London; is later buried in Halley’s tomb
1837
January 20, Sir John Soane dies in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London
1837
March 31, John Constable dies on Charlotte Street, London
1837
July 15, Chopin visits England
1843
June 15, Edvard Grieg born, Bergen, Norway
1845
John Couch Adams discovers the planet Neptune
1848
October 31, Chopin plays the final concert of his life, at the Guildhall, London
1849
British psychiatrist John Charles Bucknill uses electrical stimulation to treat asylum patients with melancholic depression
1849
Pendeen Church in Cornwall built on the model of Iona Cathedral, Mull
1852
Liszt revises and completes his Transcendental Studies (S.139) for solo piano
1861
Couch Adams becomes Director of the Cambridge Observatory
1862
January 29, Frederick Delius born in Bradford
1862
August 22, Claude Debussy born St. Germain-en-Laye, France
1864
May 20, Clare dies in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum
1866
Brahms composes his German Requiem
1867
Grieg founds the Music Union in Christiana
1869
April 3, the first performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto 1
1873
April 1, Sergei Rachmaninov born in Novgorod, Russia
1874
September 21, Gustav Holst born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
1876
John and Charles Wesley’s The Methodist Hymnal published
1879
March 14, Albert Einstein born in Ulm, Germany
1882
John Sowerby publishes British Wild Flowers
1882
June 17, Igor Stravinsky born St. Petersburg, Russia
1882
Greig begins work on a second piano concerto unfinished at his death
1886
July 21, Franz Liszt dies Bayreuth, Germany
1887
February 27, Borodin dies in St. Petersburg, Russia
1888
May 11, Israel Baline, ‘Irving Berlin’, born in Tyumen, Siberia
1889
March 12, Vaslav Nijinsky born in Kiev, Russian Empire
1890
December 29, Meredith Starr (Herbert Close) born Hampton, Middx
1892
January 21, Couch Adams dies in Cambridge
1894
February 25, Merwan Sheriar Irani (Meher Baba) born in Poona, Persia
1895
November 1, David Jones born in Brockley, Kent
1895
November 16, Paul Hindemith born, Hanau, Germany
1896
October 28, Howard Hanson born in Wahoo, Nebraska
1896
December 17, a tsunami washes away the embankment and main boulevard of Santa Monica, California
1897
April 3, Brahms dies in Vienna
1897
June 8, John Godolphin Bennett (J.G. Bennett), founder of psycho-kinetics, born in London
1898
September 26, Jacob Gershovitz, ‘George Gershwin’ born in Brooklyn, New York
1899
January 7, Francis Poulenc born in Paris
1900
Nijinsky joins the Imperial Ballet School.
1900
Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
1900
September 10, James Hilton born in Leigh, Lancashire
1903
October 3, Vladimir Horowitz born in Kiev, Russia
1905
March 23, Canon John Collins, the founder of Christian Action, born in Hawkshurst, Kent
1905
Einstein presents the Special Theory of Relativity in his paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies
1905
September 5, Arthur Koestler born in Budapest, Hungary
1906
July 8, Philip Johnson born in Cleveland, Ohio
1906
August 28, John Betjeman born in Highgate, London
1907
April 12, Imogen Holst born in Richmond, Surrey
1909
Grieg’s Piano Concerto 1 becomes the first ever to be recorded
1910
Halley’s Comet puts on a bright show
1910
January 16, Gustav Mahler conducts the premiere of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto 3 in New York
1911
May 11, Raymond ‘Mr Teasy-Weasy’ Bessone, born Wardour Street, London
1911
July 9, John Wheeler, theoretical physicist born, Jacksonville, Florida
1912
September 5, John Cage born Los Angeles
1913
November 2, Benjamin Britten born in Lowestoft, Suffolk
1914
Gustav Holst begins work on The Planets
1915
James Hilton attends The Leys School, Cambridge
1916
January 19, Brion Gysin born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire
1916
April 22, Yehudi Menuhin born in New York City, New York
1917
December 11, first performance of Poulenc’s Rapsodie Negre
1918
March 25, Debussy dies in Paris
1918
The Astronomical Congress recognises 88 star constellations
1918
August 25, Leonard Bernstein born in Lawrence, Massachusetts