Samuel Taylor Coleridge says that while writing Kubla Khan he is interrupted by 'a person on business from Porlock'

English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is published in Lyrical Ballads

English surveyor William Smith compiles a manuscript, Order of the Strata, revealing chronology through fossils in rocks

The British parliament passes a Combination Act, classing any association of labourers as a criminal conspiracy

Welsh industrialist Robert Owen takes charge of a mill at New Lanark and develops it as an experiment in paternalistic socialism

The Act of Union comes into effect, linking Ireland with Britain to form the United Kingdom

British prime minister William Pitt resigns when George III vetoes Catholic emancipation, but is recalled three years later

Both France and Britain, engaged against each other in the Napoleonic Wars, take the first census of their populations

The British parliament passes the first Factory Act, limiting a child's working day in a factory to twelve hours

A steam tug designed by William Symington, the Charlotte Dundas, goes into service on the Forth and Clyde canal

The treaty agreed at Amiens between France and Britain brings a welcome lull after ten years of warfare in Europe

English journalist William Cobbett launches a weekly newspaper, The Political Register, that he continues till his death in 1835

Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick drives a steam carriage in London, from Holborn to Paddington and back

The peace of Amiens comes to an abrupt end when Britain declares war again on France

English chemist John Dalton reads a paper describing his Law of Partial Pressure in gases (discovered in 1801)

At the end of his Partial Pressure paper, John Dalton makes brief mention of his radical theory of differing atomic weights

Richard Trevithick runs the first locomotive on rails, pulling heavy weights a distance of 9 miiles (15 km) near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales

William Blake includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton

Lord Castlereagh becomes secretary of state for war in William Pitt's government

Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame

Napoleon imposes his Continental System, designed to strangle Britain's trade

To counteract Napoleon's Continental System, Britain passes orders in council penalizing any vessel trading into French-held ports

English chemist Humphry Davy uses electrolysis to isolate the elements sodium and potassium

A Scottish clergyman, Alexander Forsyth, invents the percussion cap to help in his pursuit of wildfowl