H.G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, a story about a Time Traveller whose first stop on his journey is the year 802701

Gwen John persuades a reluctant father to allow her to follow her younger brother to the Slade School of Art in London

A promenade concert, presented by Henry Wood in London's Queen's Hall, turns out to be the beginning of a very long tradition

English poet A.E. Housman publishes his first collection, A Shropshire Lad

22-year-old Guglielmo Marconi takes out a patent in Britain for the invention of radio

English physicist Joseph John Thomson, working at the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, discovers the existence of the electron

Diamond Jubilee bonfires and fireworks all round Briain celebrate Victoria's sixty years on the throne

Turbinia, powered by the newly invented Parsons steam turbine, breaks the speed record when Queen Victoria reviews her fleet

Somerset Maugham publishes his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, based on the London life he has observed as a medical student

English author Bram Stoker publishes Dracula, his gothic tale of vampirism in Transylvania

British physician Ronald Ross identifies the Anopheles mosquito as the carrier of malaria

British chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers isolate the element c

Henry James moves from London to Lamb House in Rye, Sussex, which remains his home for the rest of his life

British chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers isolate the element neon

British chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers isolate the element xenon

H.G. Wells publishes his science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds, in which Martians arrive in a rocket to invade earth

Marconi launches a factory in Chelmsford, England, for the purpose of manufacturing radios ('wirelesses' in the language of the time)

English town-planner Ebenezer Howard puts forward a Utopian scheme in Tomorrow a Peaceful Path to Real Reform

Henry James publishes The Turn of the Screw in a collection of short stories

Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in transmitting a wireless telegraph message across the English Channel

The Boer War breaks out, ostensibly over the rights of British settlers in the Transvaal

Edward Elgar teases with the word 'enigma' printed at the head of his orchestral Variations on an Original Theme

Within a single 'Black Week' the British forces in South Africa suffer three defeats, at Stromberg, Magersfontein and Colenso

Ranjitsinhji becomes the first cricketer to score 3000 runs in a single season

E. Nesbit publishes The Story of the Treasure Seekers, introducing the Bastable family who feature in several of her books for children