Victoria marries Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and soon, with nine children, they provide the very image of the ideal Victorian family

Fox Talbot patents the 'calotype', introducing the negative-positive process that becomes standard in photography

With a teetotallers' rail trip for 570 people, Thomas Cook introduces the notion of the package tour

Lord Shaftesbury's Mines Act makes it illegal for boys under 13, and women and girls of any age, to be employed underground in Britain

The young Friedrich Engels is sent from Germany to manage the family cotton-spinning factory in Manchester

Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell pioneers mass political demonstrations, which become known as 'monster meetings'

English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin

English author Thomas Babington Macaulay publishes a collection of stirring ballads, Lays of Ancient Rome

Henry Cole commissions 1000 copies of the world's first Christmas card, designed for him by John Calcott Horsley

The statue of Nelson, by E.H. Baily, is placed on top of its column in Trafalgar Square

Isambard Kingdom Brunel launches the Great Britain, the first iron steamship designed for the transatlantic passenger trade

Daniel O'Connell is convicted of seditious conspiracy and is sentenced to prison

Ebenezer Scrooge mends his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

The first great entrepreneur of the railway age, George Hudson, becomes known as the Railway King

Daniel O'Connell is acquitted on appeal and released from prison

In his novel Coningsby Benjamin Disraeli develops the theme of Conservatism uniting 'two nations', the rich and the poor

The Young Men's Christian Association is founded in London by British drapery assistant George Williams

English naval officer John Franklin sets off with two ships, Erebus and Terror, to search for the Northwest Passage

A blight destroys the potato crop in Ireland and causes what becomes known as the Great Famine

Friedrich Engels, after running a textile factory in Manchester, publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert follow the German custom of a family Christmas tree, immediately making it popular in Britain

British prime minister Robert Peel carries a bill to repeal the Corn Laws, splitting his own party in the process

The Irish, fleeing from the potato famine at home, become the main group of immigrants to the USA

The minority of Conservatives supporting Peel become a separate faction, henceforth known as the Peelites

Edward Lear publishes his Book of Nonsense, consisting of limericks illustrated with his own cartoons