1718 – War of the Quadruple Alliance: Great Britain declares war on Spain

17 December

The War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–1720) was a result of the ambitions of King Philip V of Spain, his wife, Elisabeth Farnese, and his chief minister Giulio Alberoni to retake territories in Italy and to claim the French throne.

It saw the defeat of Spain by an alliance of Britain, France, Austria (then a state of the Holy Roman Empire), and the Dutch Republic. Savoy later joined the coalition as the fifth ally. Although fighting began as early as 1717, war was not formally declared until December 1718. It was brought to an end by the Treaty of The Hague in 1720.

Britain and France:

The war provided a unique example during the eighteenth century when Britain and France were on the same side. It came during a period between 1716 and 1731 when the two countries were allies. Spain would later join with France in the Bourbon Compact, and the two would become enemies of the British once more.

1778 – ARW: British and French fleets clash in the Battle of St. Lucia

15 December

The Battle of St. Lucia was a naval battle fought off the island of St. Lucia in the West Indies during the Anglo-French War on this day in 1778, between the British Royal Navy and the French Navy.

On 7 September 1778, the French governor of Martinique, the marquis de Bouillé, surprised and captured the British island of Dominica. On 4 November, French Admiral Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector. comte d'Estaing sailed for the West Indies from the port of Boston. On that same day, Commodore William Hotham was dispatched from Sandy Hook, New York, to reinforce the British fleet in the West Indies. Hotham sailed with "five men of war, a bomb vessel, some frigates, and a large convoy." The convoy Hotham was escorting consisted of 59 transports carrying 5,000 British soldiers under Major General Grant. The French fleet was blown off course by a violent storm, preventing it from arriving in the Caribbean ahead of the British. Admiral Samuel Barrington, the British naval commander stationed on the Leeward Islands, joined the newly arrived Commodore Hotham on 10 December at the island of Barbados. Grant's men were not permitted to disembark and spent the next several days aboard their transports. Barrington and Hotham sailed for the island of St. Lucia on the morning of 12 December.

On the evening of 13 December and morning of 14 December, Major General James Grant, supported by additional troops under Brigadier General William Medows and Brigadier General Robert Prescott, landed at Grand Cul de Sac, St. Lucia. Grant and Prescott took control of the high ground around the bay, while Medows continued on and took Vigie the following morning (14 December). On 14 December the French fleet under d’Estaing arrived, forcing Admiral Barrington to move his ships into line of battle and forgo his plan of moving the transports into Carénage Bay.

Admiral Barrington was alerted to the presence of the French fleet by the frigate Ariadne and organised his line of battle so that Isis and his three frigates (Venus, Aurora, and Ariadne) were close to shore guarding the windward approach, and he placed his flagship, Prince of Wales, toward the leeward. Barrington in a defensive strategy placed his transports inside the bay but behind his battle line which took him the entire evening of 14 December. By 1100 hours the next day, most of the transports had been safely tucked behind his line.

At 1100 hours 15 December Admiral d’Estaing approached St. Lucia with ten ships of the line, and was fired on by one of the shore batteries. D’Estaing then moved to engage Barrington from the rear, and a “warm conflict” raged between the two fleets, with the British supported by two shore batteries. D’Estaing was repulsed but succeeded in reforming his line of battle. At 1600 hours d’Estaing renewed his assault by attacking Barrington’s centre with twelve ships of the line. Again, heavy fire was exchanged and the French were eventually repulsed for a second time.

On 16 December Admiral d’Estaing appeared to be preparing for a third assault against Admiral Barrington’s line, but then sailed away towards the windward. On the evening of 16 December d’Estaing anchored in Gros Islet Bay with "ten frigates and twelve sail of the line, &c." Admiral d’Estaing’s failure to break Barrington’s line on 15 December spelled doom for the local French garrison, which surrendered on 28 December.

1939 – WWII: Battle of the River Plate

13 December

The Battle of the River Plate was the first naval battle in the Second World War and the first one of Battle of the Atlantic in South American waters.

The German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee had been located in the South Atlantic a long time before the war began, and had been commerce raiding after the war began in September 1939. One of the hunting groups sent by the British Admiralty to search for Graf Spee, comprising three Royal Navy (RN) cruisers, HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMS Achilles (the last from the New Zealand Division), found and engaged their quarry off the estuary of the River Plate close to the coast of Argentina and Uruguay in South America.

In the ensuing battle, Exeter was severely damaged and forced to retire; Ajax and Achilles suffered moderate damage. The damage to Graf Spee, although not extensive, was critical; her fuel system was crippled. Ajax and Achilles shadowed the German ship until she entered the port of Montevideo, the capital city of neutral Uruguay, to effect urgent repairs. After Graf Spee's captain Hans Langsdorff was told that his stay could not be extended beyond 72 hours, he scuttled his damaged ship rather than face the overwhelmingly superior force that the British had led him to believe was awaiting his departure.

1948 – Malayan Emergency: Batang Kali massacre

12 December

The Batang Kali massacre was the killing of 24 unarmed villagers by British troops on this day in 1948 during the Malayan Emergency. The incident occurred during counter-insurgency operations against Malay and Chinese communists in Malaya – then a colony of the British Crown. It was described as "Britain's My Lai" in Christopher Hale's Massacre in Malaya: exposing Britain's My Lai. Despite several investigations by the British government since the 1950s, and a re-examination of the evidence by the Royal Malaysia Police between 1993 and 1997, no charges were brought against any of the alleged perpetrators.

1936 – Abdication Crisis

11 December

In 1936, a constitutional crisis in the British Empire arose when King-Emperor Edward VIII proposed to marry Wallis Simpson, an American socialite who was divorced from her first husband and was pursuing a divorce of her second.

The marriage was opposed by the governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth. Religious, legal, political and moral objections were raised. As British monarch, Edward was the nominal head of the Church of England, which did not then allow divorced people to remarry if their ex-spouses were still alive, so it was widely believed that Edward could not marry Simpson and remain on the throne. Simpson was perceived to be politically and socially unsuitable as a consort because of her two failed marriages. It was widely assumed by the Establishment that she was driven by love of money or position rather than love for the King. Despite the opposition, Edward declared that he loved Simpson and intended to marry her whether his governments approved or not.

The widespread unwillingness to accept Simpson as the King's consort, and Edward's refusal to give her up, led to his abdication in December 1936. He remains the only British monarch to have voluntarily renounced the throne since the Anglo-Saxon period. He was succeeded by his brother Albert, who took the regnal name of George VI. Edward was given the title His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor following his abdication, and he married Simpson the following year. They remained married until his death 35 years later.

1907 – The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London

10 December

The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection* that raged in England from 1903 until 1910. It involved the infiltration by Swedish feminists of University of London medical lectures, pitched battles between medical students and the police, police protection for the statue of a dog, a libel trial at the Royal Courts of Justice, and the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the use of animals in experiments. The affair became a cause célèbre that divided the country.

The controversy was triggered by allegations that, in February 1903, William Bayliss of the Department of Physiology at University College London performed an illegal dissection, before an audience of 60 medical students, on a brown terrier dog – adequately anaesthetized, according to Bayliss and his team; conscious and struggling, according to the Swedish activists. The procedure was condemned as cruel and unlawful by the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Bayliss, whose research on dogs led to the discovery of hormones, was outraged by the assault on his reputation. He sued for libel and won.

Anti-vivisectionists commissioned a bronze statue of the dog as a memorial, unveiled in Battersea in 1906, but medical students were angered by its provocative plaque – "Men and women of England, how long shall these Things be?" – leading to frequent vandalism of the memorial and the need for a 24-hour police guard against the so-called anti-doggers. On 10 December 1907 1,000 medical students marched through central London waving effigies of the brown dog on sticks, clashing with suffragettes, trade unionists and 400 police officers, one of a series of battles known as the Brown Dog riots.

In March 1910, tired of the controversy, Battersea Council sent four workers accompanied by 120 police officers to remove the statue under cover of darkness, after which it was reportedly melted down by the council's blacksmith, despite a 20,000-strong petition in its favour. A new statue of the brown dog was commissioned by anti-vivisection groups over 70 years later, and was erected in Battersea Park in 1985. Peter Mason wrote in 1997 that all that was left of the old statue was a hump in the pavement, the sign on a nearby fence reading "No Dogs."

* Vivisection (from Latin vivus, meaning "alive", and sectio, meaning "cutting") is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure.

1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street is broadcast in the United Kingdom

9 December

Coronation Street is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 1960. The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, textile factory and The Rovers Return pub. The fictional street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Television in Manchester. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture. This show has been one of the most financially lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production. On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

1775 – ARW: Battle of Great Bridge

9 December

The Battle of Great Bridge was fought on this day in 1775, in the area of Great Bridge, Virginia, early in the American Revolutionary War. The victory by Continental Army and militia forces led to the departure of Governor Lord Dunmore and any remaining vestiges of British power from the Colony of Virginia during the early days of the conflict.

Following increasing political and military tensions in early 1775, both Dunmore and rebellious Whig leaders recruited troops and engaged in a struggle for available military supplies. The struggle eventually focused on Norfolk, where Dunmore had taken refuge aboard a Royal Navy vessel. Dunmore's forces had fortified one side of a critical river crossing south of Norfolk at Great Bridge, while Whig forces had occupied the other side. In an attempt to break up the Whig gathering, Dunmore ordered an attack across the bridge, which was decisively repulsed. William Woodford, the Whig commander at the battle, described it as "a second Bunker's Hill affair".

Shortly thereafter, Norfolk, at the time a Tory centre, was abandoned by Dunmore and the Tories, who fled to navy ships in the harbour. Whig-occupied Norfolk was destroyed on 1 Jan 1776 in an action begun by Dunmore and completed by Whig forces.

1980 – John Lennon is murdered

8 December

At around 10:50 pm on this day in 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in the Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times at the entrance to the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:00 pm. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman.

Ono issued a statement the next day, saying "There is no funeral for John", ending it with the words, "John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him." His body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life. As of 2015, he remains in prison, having been denied parole eight times.

P.S. Decided to go with an image from 1980 for the feature picture.

1914 – WWI - Battle of the Falkland Islands

8 December

The Battle of the Falkland Islands was a British naval victory over the Imperial German Navy on this day in 1914 during the First World War in the South Atlantic. The British, after a defeat at the Battle of Coronel on 1 November, sent a large force to track down and destroy the victorious German cruiser squadron.

Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee—commanding the German squadron of two armoured cruisers, SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau, the light cruisers SMS Nürnberg (1906), SMS Dresden and SMS Leipzig, and three auxiliaries—attempted to raid the British supply base at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. A larger British squadron—consisting of the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, the armoured cruisers HMS Carnarvon, HMS Cornwall and HMS Kent, the armed merchant cruiser HMS Macedonia and the light cruisers HMS Bristol and HMS Glasgow — had arrived in the port only the day before.

Visibility was at its maximum, the sea was placid with a gentle breeze from the northwest, and the day was bright and sunny. The advance cruisers of the German squadron had been detected early on. By nine o'clock that morning the British battlecruisers and cruisers were in hot pursuit of the five German vessels, these having taken flight in line abreast to the southeast. All except Dresden and the auxiliary Seydlitz were hunted down and sunk.

1952 – The Great Smog of '52

5 December

The Great Smog of '52 was a severe air-pollution event that affected London during December 1952. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants mostly from the use of coal to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952, and then dispersed quickly after a change of weather.

Although it caused major disruption due to the effect on visibility, and even penetrated indoor areas, it was not thought to be a significant event at the time, with London having experienced many smog events in the past, so-called "pea soupers". Government medical reports in the following weeks estimated that up until 8 December 4,000 people had died prematurely and 100,000 more were made ill because of the smog's effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater, at about 12,000.

It is known to be the worst air-pollution event in the history of the United Kingdom, and the most significant in terms of its effect on environmental research, government regulation, and public awareness of the relationship between air quality and health. It led to several changes in practices and regulations, including the Clean Air Act 1956.

1854 – Battle of the Eureka Stockade

3 December

The Eureka Stockade in 1854 was a rebellion of gold miners of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, who revolted against the colonial authority of the United Kingdom. The Battle of the Eureka Stockade, was fought between miners and the Colonial forces of Australia on this day in 1854 at Eureka Lead and named for the stockade structure erected by miners during the conflict. The rebellion lasted for less than half an hour and resulted in the deaths of at least 27 people, the majority of whom were rebels.

The event was the culmination of a period of civil disobedience in the Ballarat region during the Victorian gold rush with miners objecting to the expense of a miner's licence, taxation via the licence without representation and the actions of the government, the police and military. The local rebellion grew from a Ballarat Reform League movement and culminated in the erection by the rebels of a crude battlement and a swift and deadly siege by colonial forces.

Mass public support for the captured rebels in the colony's capital of Melbourne when they were placed on trial resulted in the introduction of the Electoral Act 1856, which mandated full white male suffrage for elections for the lower house in the Victorian parliament, the second instituted political democracy in Australia. As such, the Eureka Rebellion is controversially identified with the birth of democracy in Australia and interpreted by some as a political revolt.

1755 – The second Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed by fire

2 December

The Eddystone Lighthouse is on the dangerous Eddystone Rocks, 9 statute miles (14 km) south of Rame Head, England, United Kingdom. While Rame Head is in Cornwall, the rocks are in Devon.

The current structure is the fourth to be built on the site. The first and second (second known as Rudyerd's Lighthouse) were destroyed by storm and fire. The third, also known as Smeaton's Tower, is the best known because of its influence on lighthouse design and its importance in the development of concrete for building. Its upper portions have been re-erected in Plymouth as a monument.

1919 – Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom

28 November

Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor, (19 May 1879 – 2 May 1964) was the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat.

She was an American-born English socialite who made a second marriage to Waldorf Astor as a young woman in England. After he succeeded to the peerage and entered the House of Lords, she entered politics, in 1919 winning his former seat in Plymouth and becoming the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons. She served in Parliament as a representative of the Conservative Party for Plymouth Sutton until 1945, when she was persuaded to step down.

1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon enter the tomb of Tutankhamun

26 November

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3000 years.

In 1907 Carter was employed by Lord Carnarvon to supervise Carnarvon's Egyptian excavations in the Valley of the Kings. The intention of  was to ensure that Howard Carter imposed modern archaeological methods and systems of recording.

Carnarvon financed Carter's work in the Valley of the Kings to 1914, but until 1917 excavations and study were interrupted by the First World War. Following the end of the First World War, Carter aggressively resumed his work. After several years of finding little, Lord Carnarvon became dissatisfied with the lack of results, and in 1922 informed Carter that he had one more season of funding to search the Valley of the Kings and find the tomb.

On 4 November 1922, Howard Carter's excavation group found steps which Carter hoped led to Tutankhamun's tomb (subsequently designated KV62) (the tomb that would be considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings).

He wired Lord Carnarvon to come, and on this day in 1922, with Carnarvon, Carnarvon's daughter and others in attendance, Carter made the "tiny breach in the top left hand corner" of the doorway. He was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He did not yet know whether it was "a tomb or merely a cache", but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. When Carnarvon asked "Can you see anything?", Carter replied with the famous words: "Yes, wonderful things!"

The next several months were spent cataloguing the contents of the antechamber under the "often stressful" supervision of Pierre Lacau, director general of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt. On 16 February 1923, Carter opened the sealed doorway, and found that it did indeed lead to a burial chamber, and he got his first glimpse of the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. All of these discoveries were eagerly covered by the world's press, but most of their representatives were kept in their hotels; only H. V. Morton was allowed on the scene, and his vivid descriptions helped to cement Carter's reputation with the British public.

Carter's own notes and photographic evidence indicate that he, Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn Herbert entered the burial chamber shortly after the tomb's discovery and before the official opening.

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes 'On the Origin of Species'

On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.

Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In the 1872 sixth edition "On" was omitted, so the full title is The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. This edition is usually known as The Origin of Species. Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.

The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. As Darwin was an eminent scientist, his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. During "the eclipse of Darwinism" from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. With the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin's concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to modern evolutionary theory, and it has now become the unifying concept of the life sciences.

1963 – The BBC broadcasts "An Unearthly Child"

23 November

An Unearthly Child is the first serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC TV in four weekly parts from 23 November to 14 December 1963.

Scripted by the Australian writer Anthony Coburn, it introduces William Hartnell as the First Doctor and original companions; Carole Ann Ford as the Doctor's granddaughter Susan Foreman, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright and William Russell as Ian Chesterton as school teachers. The first episode deals with Ian and Barbara's discovery of the Doctor and his time-space ship TARDIS in a junkyard in contemporary London. The remaining episodes are set amid a power struggle between warring Stone Age factions who have lost the secret of making fire.

Initially, the first episode was recorded in September 1963 on 405-line black and white videotape. Creator Sydney Newman and producer Verity Lambert decided to rerecord the episode, while making subtle revisions in the Doctor's characterisation, following several technical and performance errors. This second recording was in October 1963.

The launch of Doctor Who was overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy the previous day. The serial received favourable reviews, and the four episodes attracted an average of 6 million viewers. However, it became overshadowed by the subsequent story, The Daleks.

1912 – The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica

12 November

Captain Robert Falcon Scott, CVO, RN (6 June 1868 – 29 March 1912) was an English Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions. During the second venture, Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition. On their return journey, Scott's party discovered plant fossils, proving Antarctica was once forested and joined to other continents. At a distance of 150 miles from their base camp and 11 miles from the next depot, Scott and his companions died from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold.

The bodies of Scott and his companions were discovered by a search party on 12 November 1912 and their records retrieved. Their final camp became their tomb; a high cairn of snow was erected over it, topped by a roughly fashioned cross. In January 1913, a large wooden cross was made, inscribed with the names of the lost party and Tennyson's line from his poem Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield", and was erected as a permanent memorial on Observation Hill, overlooking Hut Point.

1888 - The Ripper's last victim?

9 November

Mary Jane Kelly on this day in 1888), also known as Marie Jeanette Kelly, “Fair Emma”, “Ginger” and “Black Mary”, is widely believed to be the final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated several women in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early November 1888.

Largest Neolithic site on Anglesey Discovered

An important neolithic site has been discovered by archaeologists surveying the site for a new school.