Britain and France declare war on the Ottoman empire

German planes cross the Channel and bomb Dover

Roger Casement travels to Germany to persuade Irish prisoners of war to change sides and invade Ireland

Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, by George Asaf and Felix Powell, rapidly becomes one of the most popular songs of the day

Somerset Maugham publishes his semi-autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage

The Irish painter Jack Yeats develops a romantic Expressionist style, with a new interest in Celtic myth

The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her first novel, The Voyage Out

D.H. Lawrence's novel about the Brangwen family, The Rainbow, is seized by the police as an obscene work

Secret agent Richard Hannay makes his first appearance in John Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps

Rupert Brooke's 1914 and Other Poems is published a few months after his death in Greece

A Zeppelin airship makes a night-time bombing raid on the English port of Great Yarmouth

The German battle cruiser Blücher is sunk by the British off the Dogger Bank

Two passenger liners are sunk by German U-boats

Winston Churchill is a firm supporter of a new invention, the tank, encouraging its initial development while still at the Admiralty

In a secret pact, signed in London, Italy is promised territorial gains if she joins the Allied side

The British passenger liner Lusitania is sunk by a U-boat, with the loss of 1000 civilian lives

A German Zeppelin airship makes the first bombing raid on London

from December - the 225-horsepower Eagle, the first of many Rolls-Royce aero-engines, is used to power British bombers

Wartime income tax soars in Britain to an unprecedented 30%

New Zealand surgeon Harold Gillies sets up a plastic surgery unit at Aldershot, a British military base

The occupation of the General Post Office in Dublin marks the beginning of the Easter Rising

Roger Casement is arrested after returning secretly to Ireland three days before the Easter Rising

Eamon de Valera comes to prominence as one of the republican leaders in the Easter Rising

Britain and France sign the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, dividing up spheres of influence in the Middle East

Patrick Pearse and his fellow Irish rebel James Connolly are executed by firing squad