On 25th July…

1920 - Rosalind Franklin, a British scientist and the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA was born in London.

On 26th July…

796 - King Offa of Mercia, a powerful Anglo-Saxon king, died. He is famous for introducing coins bearing the king’s name and title and for the construction of Offa’s Dyke. The dyke is an earth wall and ditch barrier which ran for 140 miles along the borders of England and Wales built as a means of stopping the Welsh from raiding his lands.

On 27th July…

On 28th July…

1914 - World War I began when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia following the assassination, exactly one month earlier, of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Serbian nationalist.

1943 - During World War II, in the space of 43 minutes in the very early hours of the day, Allied bombers rained down 2,326 tonnes of incendiary bombs onto the German city of Hamburg during Operation Gomorrah. The Operation lasted a week, around 42,000 German civilians were killed, and a further 37,000 wounded, in the fires that engulfed the city reaching temperatures of 800C (1,500F).

On 29th July…

1981 - Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The ceremony was watched by over 700 million people around the world. Together they had two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.

On 30th July…

1818 - Emily Bronte was born in England. Emily had two sisters: Charlotte and Anne. All three sisters were poets and writers. Emily wrote only one novel - Wuthering Heights.

1900 - The Central London Railway was opened by the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. The line ran from Shepherds Bush to Bank and is now part of the Central Line of the London Underground.

1914 - Reluctantly Russia backed Serbia at the beginning of World War I. The Russian leader, Tsar Nicolas II, is reported to have said, “Think of the thousands and thousands of men who will be sent to their deaths.”

On 31st July…

1737 - Prince Frederick of Wales, fled Hampton Court Palace with his wife who was in labour with their first child. There was no fire or emergency at the palace, the Prince just didn’t get on with his dad, King George II, and did not want him to be present at the birth. It was the tradition for the monarch to watch the birth of any children or grandchildren, there was usually also more than several other witnesses to the birth to make certain that the baby was really born of the mother and to ensure there was no swapping of infants should the baby be stillborn. Neither King George II nor his wife, Queen Caroline, got on with their eldest son, Frederick.

1914 - The German leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II, threatened war in response to Russia’s support to its ally Serbia and ordered Russia to demobilise its military. This was the eve of World War I.