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6000 BCE
Britain cut off from continental Europe by English Channel
"There are drowned forests off Dorset, Wales and the Isle of Wight. That's because back then, the Irish Sea, North Sea and the Channel were all dry land. "When the great melt came, and the seas gradually rose by 300 feet, we were cut off from mainland Europe for good." -
5000 BCE
Proto-Indo-Europeans living in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were a hypothetical prehistoric people of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestor of the Indo-European languages according to linguistic reconstruction. -
450
Anglo-Saxon settlement (Angles, Frisians, Saxons, Jutes) of Britain begins
Bede identifies the migrants as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, reporting (Bk I, Ch 15) that the Saxons came from Old Saxony (Northern Germany) and the Angles from 'Anglia', which lay between the homelands of the Saxons and Jutes -
792
Viking raids of Britain begin
Viking raids began in England in the late 8th century, primarily on monasteries. ... The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 840 says that Æthelwulf of Wessex was defeated at Carhampton, Somerset, after 35 Viking ships had landed in the area. -
1167
Oxford University established
The University of Oxford has no known foundation date.[25] Teaching at Oxford existed in some form as early as 1096, but it is unclear when a university came into being.[1] It grew quickly from 1167 when English students returned from the University of Paris.[1] The historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188 and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190. -
1384
John Wycliffe publishes his English translation of “The Bible”
Wycliffe's Bible. Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395 -
Robert Cawdrey publishes the first English dictionary, “A Table Alphabeticall”
Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, was the first single-language English dictionary ever published. It lists approximately 3000 words, defining each one with a simple and brief description. -
Britain wrests control of Canada from the French
Disaffected French Catholics had settled along the St Lawrence River in the early 1600s and remained after Britain finally wrested control of Canada from France in 1763. British inhabitants of Nova Scotia, known as the "14th Colony", had not joined their sister colonies in revolt -
Abolition of slavery in the British Empire
Slavery Abolition Act, (1833), in British history, act of Parliament that abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada. It received Royal Assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect on August 1, 1834 -
First edition of the “Oxford English Dictionary” is published
The Oxford English Dictionary was originally published in fascicles between 1884 and 1928. A one-volume supplement was published in 1933, and four further supplementary volumes were published between 1972 and 1986