1840: Roland Hill launches the Penny Post system in United Kingdom. Samuel Cunard's first trans-Atlantic liner, the Britannia, makes inaugural crossing in 14 days 8 hours.
1841: Sir Robert Peel becomes Prime Minister. Cooke Taylor publishes Notes on a Tour of the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire. Thomas Cook organises first railway tour, from Leicester to Loughborough.
1842: The Plug Plot. Striking cotton workers march from town to town, removing the plugs from steam boilers and calling out fellow workers.
1843: Government lifts restrictions on the export of textile machinery. Ten years later, India has her own mills, with Brazil and Japan following suit.
1844: Receipts on Liverpool-Manchester railway reach £258,000 a year - profits more than £136,000. Rochdale Pioneers open their first shop in Toad Lane - beginning of modern co-operative movement. First telegraph service set up, between Paddington (London) and Slough.
1845: Start of the Irish Potato Famine. William McNaught invents the compound steam engine.
1846: Repeal of the Corn Laws.
1847: Government pass the Ten-Hour Act. The 70-hour week becomes 55.5 hours and workers have much more leisure - football and cricket become popular pastimes.
1848: Chartists hold Kennington Common meeting, masterminded by Feargus O'Connor. Public Health Act passed. Pedal cycle invented.
1851: Crampton lays first successful submarine telegraph cable between Dover and Calais. Manchester's population now 455,000.
1853: Sir George Cayley constructs the world's first man-carrying glider. He also invented the caterpillar tractor.
1854: Crimean War (to 1856).
1855: Henry Bessemer invents process for making cheap steel from pig iron, in response to call for guns for Crimean War.
1857: Indian Mutiny.
1858: Laying of first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable.
HMS Agamemnon (pictured) and USNS Niagara succeeded by starting from a point in mid-ocean and sailing in opposite directions.
1859: Battle of Solferino, Italy. Edwin Drake drills first oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania - start of commercial exploitation of petroleum.
1860: Road Locomotives Act restricts speed of road vehicles to 5mph. HMS Warrior, first ironclad battleship, launched. Start of construction of London Underground.
1861: Start of the American Civil War, cutting off raw cotton
1863: Football Association formed. Within a few years, clubs were springing up all over the country and soccer-fever gripped Britain.
1865: Abraham Lincoln assassinated.
1866: House of Commons pass the new Reform Bill. Amateur Athletic Club founded.
1867: The Reform Act. Thomas John Barnardo (1845-1905) opens his first East End mission for destitute children in Stepney, London.
1868: Trades Union Congress formed.
1869: Suez Canal completed. In the United States, Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads meet to complete the first American trans-continental line.
1870: Franco-Prussian War (until 1871). Zenobe T. Gramme perfects the ring armature - the first practical electrical dynamo.
1871: Formation of the Rugby Football Union in Britain.
1876: Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) patents the telephone - and predicts that, one day, "every city in the United States will have one.". Nicholas August Otto's gas engine becomes prototype for the modern internal combustion engine.
1877: Jesse Boot opens chemist's shop in Nottingham, using mass-selling techniques to found the first chain stores.
1878: Salvation Army formed from William Booth's East End Christian Mission. Edison patents the phonograph, using cylinders coated in tinfoil.
1879: Tay Bridge disaster in Scotland - 70 die as bridge collapses while train is crossing.
1880: Invention of electric lightbulb.
1882: Committee formed to survey route for a ship canal between Manchester and the Mersey estuary. Thomas Edison installs power-producing dynamoes at Holborn Viaduct Station, in London.
1884: Charles Parsons patents the steam turbine.
1885: Parliamentary approval given for construction of Manchester Ship Canal. Karl Benz produces his first petrol-powered motor car. Welsbach invents the incandescent gas mantle.
1887: Work begins on Manchester Ship Canal.
1888: Nikola Tesla invents the alternating-current electric motor. George Eastman designs the hand-held Kodak camera. John B. Dunlop invents the pneumatic tyre.
1892: Rudolf Diesel patents his heavy-oil engine.
1894: Manchester Ship Canal opened for sea-going vessels on January 1st.
1896: Henry Ford manufactures his first motor car.
1897: Marconi builds wireless telegraph station at Alum Bay, Isle of Wight. Frederick Creed perfects the Creed Teleprinter for use in newspaper offices.
1900: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin builds his first rigid airship.