Legislation abolishing the slave trade is passed in both Britain and America

Anglo-US tensions are heightened by a clash between the frigates Leopard and Chesapeake off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia

George Canning is appointed British foreign secretary in the new administration of the Duke of Portland

English collector Thomas Hope publishes his Greek and Egyptian designs in Household Furniture and Interior Decoration

The French capture of Madrid provokes a British response and the resulting Peninsular War

Rival British politicians Lord Castlereagh and George Canning fight a duel in which Canning is wounded

Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake brings tourists in unprecedented numbers to Scotland's Loch Katrine

The British king George III, suffering from porphyria, is deemed unfit to govern and his eldest son becomes Prince Regent

A 12-year-old Dorset child, Mary Anning, discovers at Lyme Regis a 21 ft (6.4m) fossil of an icthyosaur

Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford university for circulating a pamphlet with the title The Necessity of Atheism

English author Jane Austen publishes her first work in print, Sense and Sensibility, at her own expense

Masked Luddites smash machinery in night raids on factories in Nottingham

Lord Castlereagh becomes British foreign secretary in Spencer Perceval's government

Britain's first primary school is established by Robert Owen at New Lanark in Scotland

The British prime minister, Spencer Perceval, is assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham

After the death of Perceval, Lord Liverpool begins a 15-year spell as Britain's prime minister

Damage to US trade by British orders in council prompts war (the War of 1812) between the two nations

The US frigate Constitution, affectionately known as 'Old Ironsides', wins successes against British warships in the Atlantic

The first two cantos are published of Byron's largely autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bringing him immediate fame

William Hedley's Puffing Billy, the first steam locomotive running on smooth rails, goes to work at Wylam colliery

Quaker philanthopist Elizabeth Fry, appalled by the condition of female prisoners in London's Newgate gaol, begins campaigning on their behalf

Pride and Prejudice, based on a youthful work of 1797 called First Impressions, is the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published

A cold February freezes the Thames and makes possible the last of London's famous frost fairs

English engineer George Stephenson builds his first locomotive, the Blucher, and runs it at the Killingworth colliery

Robert Peel, chief secretary for Ireland, introduces a police force soon known as the 'Peelers'