In the federal election, the Liberals defeated the Conservatives with 118 seats to 88. Wilfrid Laurier became Canada's first French-Canadian prime minister and marked a turning point in Canadian politics after years of Conservative Party rule.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Edward was related to royalty throughout Europe. During his mother's long reign he was excluded from political power, and personified the fashionable, leisured elite. Despite public approval his reputation as a playboy prince soured his relationship with his mother.

As king, Edward fostered good relations between Britain and other European countries, especially France, for which he was popularly called "Peacemaker", but his relationship with his nephew, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, was poor. The Edwardian era, which covered Edward's reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including steam turbine propulsion and the rise of socialism

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was an American statesman and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He also served as the 25th vice president of the United States from March to September 1901 and as the 33rd governor of New York from 1899 to 1900.

He became President at age 42 following McKinley's assassination that September, and remains the youngest person to become President of the United States. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. His face is depicted on Mount Rushmore, alongside those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. In polls of historians and political scientists, Roosevelt is generally ranked as one of the five best presidents.

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, (25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930) was a British statesman and Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905.

He oversaw reform of British defence policy and secured the Entente Cordiale with France, leaving Germany in the cold. Resignations from the Cabinet over tariffs left his party divided. He also suffered from public anger at the later stages of the Boer war and the importation of Chinese labour to South Africa.

Roald Amundsen, travelling west of King William Island, sighted an American whaling ship that had come from San Francisco. At this point, he knew that he had achieved the Northwest Passage, a quest that had obsessed explorers for nearly 400 years.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

Alberta and Saskatchewan entered Canada as the 8th and 9th provinces by two federal Acts which received royal assent on 20 July. Alberta's boundary with Saskatchewan was set at 110°, though Albertans wanted 107°. The Acts (Autonomy Bills) declared that the West was to have non-denominational schools

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (7 September 1836 – 22 April 1908) was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1905 to 1908. He was the first First Lord of the Treasury to be officially called "Prime Minister", the term only coming into official usage five days after he took office.

When Arthur Balfour resigned as Prime Minister, Edward VII invited Campbell-Bannerman to form a minority government as the first Liberal Prime Minister of the 20th century. At 69, he was the oldest person to become Prime Minister for the first time in the 20th century. He almost immediately dissolved Parliament and called a general election.

Charles Edward Saunders completed the development of Marquis wheat, a fast-maturing variety suited to the Prairies. It was first distributed to farmers in 1909 and greatly extended the area in which wheat could be grown. By 1920 it comprised 90% of the wheat grown on the Prairies.

Text © The Canadian Encyclopedia photo courtesy Grace Taylor.

Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, (1 June 1907 – 9 August 1996) was a British Royal Air Force air officer. He is credited with single-handedly inventing the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 for a similar invention; however, this was technically unfeasible at the time. Whittle's jet engines were developed some years earlier than those of Germany's Hans von Ohain who was the designer of the first operational turbojet engine.

Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916.

He was the last prime minister to lead a majority Liberal government. He played a central role in the design and passage of major liberal legislation and a reduction of the power of the House of Lords. In August 1914, Asquith took Great Britain and the British Empire into the First World War. In 1915 his government was vigorously attacked for the shortage of munitions and the failure at Gallipoli. He formed a coalition government with the other parties but failed to satisfy critics. He was forced to resign in December 1916 and never regained power.

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt.

His administration was filled with conflict between the conservative wing of the Republican Party, with which Taft sympathized, and the progressive wing, toward which Roosevelt moved more and more. Controversies over conservation and antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to further separate the two men. Roosevelt challenged Taft for renomination in 1912. Taft used his control of the party machinery to gain a bare majority of delegates and Roosevelt bolted the party.

George V's reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected British House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords. As a result of the First World War (1914–1918), the empires of his first cousins Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany fell, while the British Empire expanded to its greatest effective extent.

In 1917, George became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment. In 1924 he appointed the first Labour ministry and in 1931 the Statute of Westminster recognised the dominions of the Empire as separate, independent states within the Commonwealth of Nations.

Sir Robert Laird Borden, (June 26, 1854 – June 10, 1937) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the eighth prime minister of Canada, in office from 1911 to 1920. He is best known for his leadership of Canada during World War I. Borden was born in Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia.

He was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1896, representing the Conservative Party. He replaced Charles Tupper as party leader in 1901, and became prime minister after the party's victory at the 1911 federal election. As prime minister, Borden led Canada through World War I and its immediate aftermath. For the 1917 federal election (the first in six years), Borden created the Unionist Party, an amalgam of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals; his government was re-elected with an overwhelming majority.

RMS Titanic sank in the early morning of 15 Apr 1912, 4 days into its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. The largest liner in service at the time, her sinking killed over 1,500 people, one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. The disaster caused widespread outrage over the lack of lifeboats, lax regulations, and unequal treatment of the 3 passenger classes during evacuation

Computers owe their existence to British mathematician, Alan Turing. A child prodigy, he went on to pursue his PhD at Princeton University. He was an important member of a group of code-breakers in the Government Code and Cypher School in Bletchley Park and was given the daunting task of deciphering the ever-changing German codes sent by Enigma. He and his team of code-breakers were successful. Despite his part in ensuring the defeat of Germany he was prosecuted for his homosexuality, and committed suicide. In 2009 the British government issued a public apology for the way he was treated and in 2013 he was posthumously pardoned.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was an American statesman and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921.

A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and as governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933. He also led the United States during World War I, establishing an activist foreign policy known as "Wilsonianism." He was one of the three key leaders at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where he championed a new League of Nations, but he was unable to win Senate approval for US participation in the League.

World War I (often abbreviated as WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It was also one of the deadliest conflicts in history; an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

The Sinking of RMS Lusitania occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 during WWI, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the UK which had implemented a naval blockade of Germany. The ship was torpedoed by a U-boat and sank in 18 minutes, killing 1,198 and leaving 761 survivors. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany, and contributed to the American entry into WWI

Born in New Zealand, Maurice Wilkins was a biophysicist awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He worked in the Manhattan project but lost interest in nuclear weapons and changed to biophysics. He and Rosalind Franklin provided the secondary research to the double helix theory. He shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick as Franklin died in 1958.

The Easter Rising was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter, launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland. 485 people were killed, over 2,600 wounded. Many of the civilians were killed as a result of the British using artillery and heavy machine guns, or mistaking civilians for rebels. Others were caught in the crossfire in a crowded city. It left parts of Dublin in ruins

Francis Crick was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He is the co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule. He, along with Watson and Maurice Wilkins were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine ‘for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids, the Double Helix and its significance for information transfer in living material’

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician. He was the final Liberal to serve as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908–1915) during H. H. Asquith's tenure as Prime Minister, Lloyd George was a key figure in the introduction of many reforms which laid the foundations of the modern welfare state. His most important role came as the highly energetic Prime Minister of the Wartime Coalition Government (1916–22), during and immediately after the First World War. He was a major player at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that reordered Europe after the defeat of the Central Powers.

The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note or Zimmerman Cable) was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico. In the event that the United States entered World War I against Germany, Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The telegram was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. Revelation of the contents enraged Americans, especially after German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted the telegram was genuine on March 3, and helped generate support for the United States declaration of war on Germany in April. The decryption was described as the most significant intelligence triumph for Britain during World War I, and one of the earliest occasions on which a piece of signal intelligence influenced world events.

At Halifax, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc collided with the Belgian relief ship Imo. The resulting explosion, the largest before the advent of the atomic bomb, killed more than 1,600 people and injured 9,000 in Canada's worst disaster.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

As WWI moved to its end the world was swept with a pandemic of epic proportions, killing more people than the fighting. It was called Spanish Flu because it only became widely reported when it reached neutral Spain, press censorship having suppressed news of it elsewhere. One theory is that it was brought to Europe by US Troops. patient zero having been traced to a military training camp in the United States

Arthur Meighen (16 June 1874 – 5 August 1960) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the ninth prime minister of Canada, in office from July 1920 to December 1921 and again from June to September 1926. Meighen was born in rural Perth County, Ontario. Meighen entered the House of Commons of Canada in 1908, aged 34, and in 1913 was appointed to the Cabinet of Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden. In 1920, Meighen succeeded Borden as Conservative leader and Prime Minister. He suffered a heavy defeat in the 1921 election to Mackenzie King and the Liberal Party.

Meighen's brief second term as Prime Minister came about as the result of the "King–Byng Affair," being invited to form a ministry after Mackenzie King was refused an election request and resigned. He soon lost a no-confidence motion, however, and faced another federal election. Meighen lost his own seat, and the Conservatives lost 24, as Mackenzie King's Liberals re-took power.

Rosalind Franklin was a renowned English chemist who did pioneering work in X-ray crystallography. Her most important discovery was the structure of DNA molecule. Working with Maurice Wilkins and a doctorate student Raymond Gosling, she was able to correctly assess the structure of DNA. Her theory that DNA consists of two helical structures was later confirmed by scientists James Watson and Francis Crick

Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was the 29th president of the United States from 1921 until his death in 1923, a member of the Republican Party.

At that time, he was one of the most popular U.S. presidents, but the subsequent exposure of scandals that took place under his administration such as Teapot Dome eroded his popular regard, as did revelations of an affair by Nan Britton, one of his mistresses. In historical rankings of the U.S. presidents, Harding is often rated among the worst.

Frederick Banting and Charles Best at the University of Toronto first isolated insulin. The first diabetes patient was treated on 11 January 1922. Banting and J.J.R. Macleod received the Nobel Prize for their achievement. [The award was controversial - see full article]

Text © The Canadian Encyclopedia Photo (courtesy Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U of Toronto)

William Lyon Mackenzie King (December 17, 1874 – July 22, 1950) was the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s through the 1940s. He served as the tenth prime minister of Canada in 1921–1926, 1926–1930 and 1935–1948. He is best known for his leadership of Canada throughout the Second World War (1939–1945) when he mobilized Canadian money, supplies and volunteers to support Britain while boosting the economy and maintaining morale on the home front.

King acceded to the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1919. Taking the helm of a party bitterly torn apart during the First World War, he reconciled factions, unifying the Liberal Party and leading it to victory in the 1921 election. His party was out of office during the harshest days of the Great Depression in Canada, 1930–35; he returned when the economy was on an upswing.

A survey of scholars in 1997 by Maclean's magazine ranked King first among all Canada's prime ministers, ahead of Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. As historian Jack Granatstein notes, "the scholars expressed little admiration for King the man but offered unbounded admiration for his political skills and attention to Canadian unity."

Andrew Bonar Law (16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923), commonly called Bonar Law was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1922 to 1923

Bonar Law was the shortest-serving PM of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown Prime Minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British Prime Ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law whom no one knew.

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 1867 – 14 December 1947) was a British statesman and Conservative Party politician who dominated the government in his country between the world wars. Three times Prime Minister, he is the only British prime minister to have served under three monarchs.

Upon Bonar Law's resignation due to health reasons in May 1923, Baldwin became Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. He called an election on the issue of tariffs and lost the Conservatives' parliamentary majority, after which Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority Labour government.

John Calvin Coolidge Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was an American politician and the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. In 1920 he was elected vice president of the United States, and he succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923.

Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small government conservative and also as a man who said very little, although having a rather dry sense of humor. Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration, and left office with considerable popularity

James Ramsay MacDonald FRS (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1935. He was the first Labour Party politician to become Prime Minister, leading minority Labour governments in 1924 and in 1929–31. He headed a National Government from 1931 to 1935, dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members.

In 1924, his first priority was to undo the perceived damage caused by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, by settling the reparations issue and coming to terms with Germany. The king noted in his diary, "He wishes to do the right thing.... Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government!"

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 1867 – 14 December 1947) was a British statesman and Conservative Party politician who dominated the government in his country between the world wars. Three times Prime Minister, he is the only British prime minister to have served under three monarchs.

Baldwin's second government saw reforms in areas formerly associated with the Liberal Party. They included industrial conciliation, unemployment insurance, a more extensive old-age pension system, slum clearance, more private housing, and expansion of maternal and childcare. His government also saw the General Strike in 1926 and the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 to curb the powers of trade unions.

John Logie Baird makes the first public demonstration of a mechanical television on 26 January at Selfridge's department store in London (the first successful transmissions were in early 1923 and February 1924). Later, in July 1928, he demonstrated the first colour television.

Arthur Meighen (16 June 1874 – 5 August 1960) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the ninth prime minister of Canada, in office from July 1920 to December 1921 and again from June to September 1926. Meighen was born in rural Perth County, Ontario. Meighen entered the House of Commons of Canada in 1908, aged 34, and in 1913 was appointed to the Cabinet of Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden. In 1920, Meighen succeeded Borden as Conservative leader and Prime Minister. He suffered a heavy defeat in the 1921 election to Mackenzie King and the Liberal Party.

Meighen's brief second term as Prime Minister came about as the result of the "King–Byng Affair," being invited to form a ministry after Mackenzie King was refused an election request and resigned. He soon lost a no-confidence motion, however, and faced another federal election. Meighen lost his own seat, and the Conservatives lost 24, as Mackenzie King's Liberals re-took power.

William Lyon Mackenzie King (December 17, 1874 – July 22, 1950) was the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s through the 1940s. He served as the tenth prime minister of Canada in 1921–1926, 1926–1930 and 1935–1948. He is best known for his leadership of Canada throughout the Second World War (1939–1945) when he mobilized Canadian money, supplies and volunteers to support Britain while boosting the economy and maintaining morale on the home front.

King acceded to the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1919. Taking the helm of a party bitterly torn apart during the First World War, he reconciled factions, unifying the Liberal Party and leading it to victory in the 1921 election. His party was out of office during the harshest days of the Great Depression in Canada, 1930–35; he returned when the economy was on an upswing.

A survey of scholars in 1997 by Maclean's magazine ranked King first among all Canada's prime ministers, ahead of Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. As historian Jack Granatstein notes, "the scholars expressed little admiration for King the man but offered unbounded admiration for his political skills and attention to Canadian unity."

The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This act expanded on the Representation of the People Act 1918 which had given some women the vote in Parliamentary elections for the first time after World War I. The 1928 Act widened suffrage by giving women electoral equality with men. It gave the vote to all women over 21 years old, regardless of property ownership. Prior to this act only women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications could vote.

James Watson is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist who co-discovered the molecular structure of DNA. His discovery has been described by other biologists and Nobel laureates as the most important scientific discovery of the 20th C. Crick, Wilkins and Watson discovered the double helix structure of the DNA molecule

The effects of penicillium mould were isolated in 1928 by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming, in his laboratory in the basement of St Mary's Hospital in London (now part of Imperial College). Fleming coined the term "penicillin"

MartinLuther King Jr was a leader of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. While fighting injustice meted out to African-Americans, he shunned violence. He used Christian doctrines but he looked towards Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent movement. He dreamt that one day every human being would be judged by their ability, not skin colour. He died from a white fanatic’s bullet aged 39

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American engineer, businessman and politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 during the Great Depression.

A Republican, as Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s he introduced themes of efficiency in the business community and provided government support for standardization, efficiency and international trade. As president from 1929 to 1933, his domestic programs were overshadowed by the onset of the Great Depression. Hoover was defeated in a landslide election in 1932 by Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt. After this loss, Hoover became staunchly conservative, and advocated against Roosevelt's New Deal policies.

James Ramsay MacDonald FRS (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1935. He was the first Labour Party politician to become Prime Minister, leading minority Labour governments in 1924 and in 1929–31. He headed a National Government from 1931 to 1935, dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members.

MacDonald's second government was in a stronger parliamentary position than his first, and in 1930 he was able to raise unemployment pay, pass an act to improve wages and conditions in the coal industry (i.e. the issues behind the General Strike) and pass a housing act which focused on slum clearances. In 1931, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, he was forced to form a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals.

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until the late-1930s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century.

The Great Depression started in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929, and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday). Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II.

Richard Bedford Bennett, 1st Viscount Bennett, (3 July 1870 – 26 June 1947), was a Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician. He served as the 11th prime minister of Canada, in office from 1930 to 1935. Bennett was born in Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick, and grew up in nearby Hopewell Cape.

He served in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories from 1898 to 1905, and later in the Alberta Legislature from 1909 to 1911. He was the inaugural leader of the Alberta Conservative Party from 1905, resigning upon his election to the House of Commons in 1911. Bennett became prime minister after the 1930 election, where the Conservatives won a landslide victory over Mackenzie King's Liberal Party. He was the first prime minister to represent a constituency in Alberta.

The main difficulty during Bennett's prime ministership was the Great Depression. He and his party initially tried to combat the crisis with laissez-faire policies, but these were largely ineffective. However, over time Bennett's government became increasingly interventionist, attempting to replicate the popular "New Deal" enacted by Franklin Roosevelt to the south. This about-face prompted a split within Conservative ranks, and was regarded by the general public as evidence of incompetence. Bennett consequently suffered a landslide defeat at the 1935 election, with Mackenzie King returning for a third term.

The Statute of Westminster received royal assent after being passed by the British Parliament. By establishing complete legislative equality between the parliaments of Britain and Canada, it is the closest Canada has come to a declaration of independence.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

RAF College Cranwell cadet Frank Whittle submitted his initial design for a turbo-jet to his superiors in 1928. It was whilst writing his thesis at the RAF College that Frank Whittle first developed the fundamental concepts of the turbojet engine. He was awarded his first patent for it in 1932. He spent a few more years actually building one, with the first running example being completed in 1937.

Cryptanalysis enabled the WWII Allies to read Enigma-enciphered Morse-coded communications of the Axis powers. The Enigma machines were portable cipher machines. Good operating procedures would have made them unbreakable but most of the German agencies that used Enigma used flawed procedures. It was broken by a Polish Cipher Bureau in Dec 1932, with the aid of French-supplied intelligence material obtained from a German.

In 1933, Harry Beck's iconic, diagrammatic map of the London Underground appeared for the first time. Existing maps were not easy to follow because they reflected the topography above ground. Beck realised that, once underground, passengers need not be bound by what lay above, and he could lay out the map in a simpler way that was easier to understand, a system that has been copied on metro system across the world.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.

A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in US history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which realigned American politics into the Fifth Party System and defined American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century. He is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 1867 – 14 December 1947) was a British statesman and Conservative Party politician who dominated the government in his country between the world wars. Three times Prime Minister, he is the only British prime minister to have served under three monarchs.

With MacDonald's health in decline, he and Baldwin changed places: Baldwin was now Prime Minister, MacDonald Lord President of the Council. In October that year Baldwin called a general election. advised to make rearmament the leading issue in the election campaign against Labour, Baldwin said he would support the League of Nations, modernise Britain's defences and remedy deficiencies; but he also said: "I give you my word that there will be no great armaments". The main issues in the election were housing, unemployment and the special areas of economic depression

William Lyon Mackenzie King (December 17, 1874 – July 22, 1950) was the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s through the 1940s. He served as the tenth prime minister of Canada in 1921–1926, 1926–1930 and 1935–1948. He is best known for his leadership of Canada throughout the Second World War (1939–1945) when he mobilized Canadian money, supplies and volunteers to support Britain while boosting the economy and maintaining morale on the home front.

King acceded to the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1919. Taking the helm of a party bitterly torn apart during the First World War, he reconciled factions, unifying the Liberal Party and leading it to victory in the 1921 election. His party was out of office during the harshest days of the Great Depression in Canada, 1930–35; he returned when the economy was on an upswing.

A survey of scholars in 1997 by Maclean's magazine ranked King first among all Canada's prime ministers, ahead of Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. As historian Jack Granatstein notes, "the scholars expressed little admiration for King the man but offered unbounded admiration for his political skills and attention to Canadian unity."

Sir Magdi Yacoub is one of the world's most respected cardiac surgeons. Born in Egypt, he decided early on that he wanted to become a doctor and help others. He studied medicine at Cairo University and thereafter moved to the UK Most of his innovations and pioneering work in the field of heart surgery came during his stint in the hospitals in UK He is well known for his innovations in tissue engineering, myocardial regeneration, and transplant immunology.

Edward VIII was king of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication on 11 December the same year, after which he became the Duke of Windsor.

Edward became king on his father's death in early 1936. Only months into his reign, he caused a constitutional crisis by proposing to Wallis Simpson, an American who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the UK and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands was politically and socially unacceptable as a prospective queen consort. When it became apparent he could not marry Wallis and remain on the throne, Edward abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother, George VI.

The Jarrow March was a protest against the unemployment and poverty suffered in the English Tyneside town of Jarrow during the 1930s. Around 200 men marched from Jarrow to London, carrying a petition to the British government requesting the re-establishment of industry in the town. They went home believing they had failed. In subsequent years, the Jarrow March became recognised as a defining event of the 1930s

George VI was king of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death in 1952. He was the last emperor of India and the first head of the Commonwealth.

As the second son of King George V, George VI was not expected to inherit the throne and spent his early life in the shadow of his elder brother, Edward who ascended the throne upon the death of their father in 1936. However, later that year Edward abdicated to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson, and George ascended the throne as the third monarch of the House of Windsor.

Arthur Neville Chamberlain (18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940) was a British statesman and Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940.

Chamberlain is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. When Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, the UK declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, and Chamberlain led Britain through the first eight months of the Second World War. Chamberlain resigned the premiership on 10 May 1940, as he believed that a government supported by all parties was essential, and the Labour and Liberal parties would not join a government headed by him.

World War II (often abbreviated to WWII or WW2.) The vast majority of the world's countries - including all the great powers - eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. WWII was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Canada declared war on Germany, 7 days after Britain and France. The first Canadian troops left for England in December. Although "obliged to go to war at Britain's side," King's delay of a week was a symbolic gesture of independence

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

The National Registration Act 1939 established a National Register which began operating on 29 September 1939 (National Registration Day), a system of identity cards, and a requirement that they must be produced on demand or presented to a police station within 48 hours.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician, statesman, army officer, and writer, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. As Prime Minister, Churchill led Britain to victory in the Second World War. Ideologically an economic liberal and British imperialist, he began and ended his parliamentary career as a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, but for twenty years from 1904 he was a prominent member of the Liberal Party.

Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the UK and Western world, where he is seen as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending liberal democracy from the spread of fascism. Also praised as a social reformer and writer, among his many awards was the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Battle of Britain: RAF Fighter Command thwarted the Luftwaffe's attempts to gain air supremacy over southern England, averting invasion and downing 1,733 German aircraft. This came at a cost: 915 British aircraft were lost and about 544 of 2,927 RAF aircrew. Their numerical disadvantage prompted the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill to say 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.'

The German invasion of Russia – Operation Barbarossa begins. More than 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invade the USSR along a front stretching almost 3,000 km – the largest military operation in history would also result in the largest casualty rate

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941.

The surprise attack came as a profound shock to the American people and led directly to the American entry into World War II in both the Pacific and European theatres. There were precedents for unannounced military action by Japan, but the lack of any formal warning, particularly while negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy". Because the attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, the attack on Pearl Harbor was later judged in the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime.

Stephen William Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author, who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge at the time of his death. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.

Hawking achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discussed his own theories and cosmology in general. His book A Brief History of Time appeared on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. He was a fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

In 1963, Hawking was diagnosed with an early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease that gradually paralysed him. He died on 14 March 2018 at the age of 76, after more than 50 years battling the disease.

Colossus was a set of computers developed by British codebreakers in the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus is thus regarded as the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer, although it was programmed by switches and plugs and not by a stored program.

The existence of the Colossus machines was kept secret until the mid-1970s, although some of its personnel and secret information undoubtedly fueled further development in the U.S. in the late 1940s; the machines and the plans for building them were destroyed in the 1960s as part of the effort to maintain the secrecy of the project. This deprived most of those involved with Colossus of the credit for pioneering electronic digital computing during their lifetimes.

“We cannot afford to fail.” General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander. The British and American airborne armada began its mission. They landed at the edges of the invasion area on the Normandy coast to secure the western and eastern flanks of the beachheads to protect them from German attacks. Failure would see Hitler given the opportunity for an 11th-hour attempt to save Germany and launch his new V-weapons against British cities.

Concentration Camps were erected in Germany from Mar 1933 after Hitler became Chancellor. Used to hold and torture political opponents and union organizers, the camps initially held around 45,000 prisoners and reached a monstrous 715,000 in January 1945

The first major camp, Majdanek, was discovered by the advancing Soviets on July 23, 1944.

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States (1945–1953), succeeding upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt after serving as vice president. He implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, and established the Truman Doctrine and NATO.

Soon after succeeding to the presidency he became the only world leader to have used nuclear weapons in war. Truman's administration engaged in an internationalist foreign policy and renounced isolationism. He rallied his New Deal coalition during the 1948 presidential election and won a surprise victory that secured his own presidential term.

For days, people had been anticipating the German surrender – bell ringers were on-hand to ring in victory at St Paul’s Cathedral, while across the country Union Jack flags and bunting were ready for the celebrations that would come. On 8 May 1945 unconditional surrender was signed and the news the world had been waiting for arrived. War in Europe was over!

Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967) was a British statesman and Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951.

Following the end of the War in Europe, Attlee and Churchill favoured the coalition government remaining in place until Japan had been defeated. However, Herbert Morrison made it clear that the Labour Party would not be willing to accept this, and Churchill was forced to call an immediate election. Labour won by a huge landslide, winning 393 seats in the House of Commons, a working majority of 146. This was the first time in history that the Labour Party had won a majority in Parliament.

While the war in Europe ended in May it continued in the Far East. The Japanese finally surrendered on 14 August following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The next day, Wednesday 15 August 1945 was celebrated as VJ (Victory over Japan) Day. The official US commemoration is September 2. The name, V-J Day, had been selected by the Allies after they named V-E Day for the victory in Europe.

The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights. The UN has 4 main purposes
1. To keep peace throughout the world
2. To develop friendly relations among nations
3. To help nations work together to improve the lives of poor people, to conquer hunger, disease and illiteracy, and to encourage respect for each other’s rights and freedoms
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations to achieve these goals

The Nuremberg trials were a series of military trials held by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war after WWII to prosecute prominent members of the leadership of Nazi Germany who had any role in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The First trial was of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal - 24 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich – Bormann was tried in absentia, while Robert Ley committed suicide within a week of the trial's commencement.

In a country weary but disciplined by war, the National Health Service (NHS) is launched with the proud expectation that it would make the UK the ‘envy of the world’.

At its launch by Bevan on 5 July 1948 it had at its heart three core principles: That it meet the needs of everyone, that it be free at the point of delivery, and that it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay.

Louis Stephen St. Laurent (1 February 1882 – 25 July 1973) was the 12th prime minister of Canada, from 15 November 1948 to 21 June 1957. He was a Liberal with a strong base in the Catholic francophone community, from which he had long mobilised support to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. His foreign policy initiatives transformed Canada from an isolationist ex-colony with little role in world affairs to an active "middle power".

St. Laurent was an enthusiastic proponent of Canada's joining NATO in 1949 to fight the spread of Communism, overcoming opposition from some intellectuals, the Labor-Progressive Party, and many French Canadians. The contrast with Mackenzie King was not dramatic – they agreed on most policies. St. Laurent had more hatred of communism, and less fear of the United States. He was neither an idealist nor a bookish intellectual, but an "eminently moderate, cautious conservative man ... and a strong Canadian nationalist"

Newfoundland entered the Dominion of Canada as the 10th province through an Act of Westminster. The first session of the legislature was held at St. John's on 13 July.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

On 4 March 1947 the Treaty of Dunkirk was signed by France and the United Kingdom as a Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance in the event of a possible attack by Germany or the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II. In 1948, this alliance was expanded to include the Benelux countries, in the form of the Western Union, also referred to as the Brussels Treaty Organization (BTO), established by the Treaty of Brussels. Talks for a new military alliance which could also include North America resulted in the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949 by the member states of the Western Union plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland

The Korean War was a product of the Cold War and began when North Korean forces - supported by the Soviet Union and China -moved into the south on 25 June 1950. The UN authorized the dispatch of forces to repel the North Korean invasion. 21 UN countries contributed to the UN force, with the US providing around 90% of the military personnel. The fighting ended on 27 July 1953, when an armistice was signed. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone to separate North and South Korea, and allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty was ever signed, and according to some sources the two Koreas are technically still at war. In April 2018, the leaders of North and South Korea met at the DMZ and agreed to work towards a treaty to formally end the war

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician, statesman, army officer, and writer, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. As Prime Minister, Churchill led Britain to victory in the Second World War. Ideologically an economic liberal and British imperialist, he began and ended his parliamentary career as a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, but for twenty years from 1904 he was a prominent member of the Liberal Party.

Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the UK and Western world, where he is seen as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending liberal democracy from the spread of fascism. Also praised as a social reformer and writer, among his many awards was the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Elizabeth II became head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon on 6 Feb 1952.

She has reigned through major constitutional changes, such as devolution in the UK, Canadian patriation, and the decolonisation of Africa. Her many historic visits and meetings include a state visit to the Republic of Ireland and visits to or from five popes. Significant events have included her coronation in 1953 and the celebrations of her Silver, Golden, and Diamond Jubilees in 1977, 2002, and 2012 respectively. In 2017, she became the first British monarch to reach a Sapphire Jubilee. She is the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch as well as the world's longest-reigning queen regnant and female head of state, the oldest and longest-reigning current monarch and the longest-serving current head of state.

Francis Crick and James Watson, analyse data taken by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, to decipher the double helical structure of DNA.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 was awarded jointly to Crick, Watson & Wilkins. Having died in 1958, and there being no posthumous awards, Franklin did not receive an award.

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American army general and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961.

During World War II, he was a five-star general in the United States Army and served as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. He was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45 from the Western Front. In 1952, Eisenhower entered the presidential race as a Republican to block the isolationist foreign policies of Senator Robert A. Taft, who opposed NATO and wanted no foreign entanglements. He won that election and the 1956 election in landslides.

The Breaking of the 4 Minute Mile, by Roger Bannister, took place in Oxford, watched by about 3,000 spectators. With winds of up to 25 mph before the event, Bannister had said that he would try again at another meet. But the winds dropped just before the race and Bannister did run.

The race was broadcast live by BBC Radio and commentated by 1924 Olympic 100 metres champion Harold Abrahams, of Chariots of Fire fame.

Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative politician who served a relatively brief term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1957. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, he succeeded him as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister in April 1955, and a month later won a general election.

Eden's worldwide reputation as an opponent of appeasement, a "man of peace", and a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in 1956 when the United States refused to support the Anglo-French military response to the Suez Crisis. Two months after ordering an end to the Suez operation, he resigned as Prime Minister on grounds of ill health and because he was widely suspected of having misled the House of Commons over the degree of collusion with France and Israel.

The Vietnam War took place from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, with US involvement ending in 1973. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies.

An anti-war movement gained strength in the US. Nixon appealed to the "silent majority" of Americans who he said supported the war but revelations of the My Lai Massacre, and the 1969 "Green Beret Affair" provoked national and international outrage. In 1971 the Pentagon Papers were leaked to The New York Times. The top-secret history of US involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions on the part of the US government.

Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British statesman and Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. Nicknamed "Supermac", he was known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability.

He presided over an age of affluence, marked by low unemployment and high - if uneven - growth. He told the nation they had 'never had it so good', but warned of the dangers of inflation, summing up the fragile prosperity of the 1950s. Macmillan rebuilt the Special Relationship with the United States from the wreckage of the Suez Crisis, and redrew the world map by decolonising sub-Saharan Africa. Reconfiguring the nation's defences to meet the realities of the nuclear age, he ended National Service, strengthened the nuclear forces by acquiring Polaris, and pioneered the Nuclear Test Ban with the United States and the Soviet Union. His unwillingness to disclose United States nuclear secrets to France contributed to a French veto of the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community.

John George Diefenbaker (September 18, 1895 – August 16, 1979) was the 13th prime minister of Canada, serving from June 21, 1957 to April 22, 1963. He was the only Progressive Conservative (PC or Tory) party leader after 1930 and before 1979 to lead the party to an election victory, doing so three times, although only once with a majority of seats in the House of Commons of Canada.

In 1957, he led the Tories to their first electoral victory in 27 years; a year later he called a snap election and spearheaded them to one of their greatest triumphs. Diefenbaker appointed the first female minister in Canadian history to his Cabinet, as well as the first aboriginal member of the Senate. During his six years as Prime Minister, his government obtained passage of the Canadian Bill of Rights and granted the vote to the First Nations and Inuit peoples. In foreign policy, his stance against apartheid helped secure the departure of South Africa from the Commonwealth of Nations, but his indecision on whether to accept Bomarc nuclear missiles from the United States led to his government's downfall.

Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957, orbiting for three weeks before its batteries died, then silently for two more months before falling back into the atmosphere.

It was a 58 cm (23 in) diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. Its radio signal was easily detectable even by radio amateurs, and the 65° inclination and duration of its orbit made its flight path cover virtually the entire inhabited Earth. This surprise success precipitated the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space Race, a part of the Cold War. The launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments.

The Saint Lawrence Seaway was opened to commercial shipping. Queen Elizabeth II and President Eisenhower dedicated it on June 26. The Seaway provided transportation for ocean going vessels from Lake Superior to Montréal.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963.

He served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his presidency dealt with managing relations with the Soviet Union. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate prior to becoming president. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Pursuant to the Presidential Succession Act, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president later that day

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history, integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the group later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways.

The Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 800 million records worldwide. They are the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and all four main members were inducted individually from 1994 to 2015. They have also had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act. They were also collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people.

Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson> (23 April 1897 – 27 December 1972) was a Canadian scholar, statesman, soldier, prime minister, and diplomat, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for organizing the United Nations Emergency Force to resolve the Suez Canal Crisis. He was the 14th prime minister of Canada from 22 April 1963 to 20 April 1968, as the head of two back-to-back Liberal minority governments following elections in 1963 and 1965.

During Pearson's time as Prime Minister, his Liberal minority governments introduced universal health care, student loans, the Canada Pension Plan, the Order of Canada, and the Maple Leaf flag. His Liberal government also unified Canada's armed forces. Pearson convened the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, and he kept Canada out of the Vietnam War. In 1967, his government passed Bill C-168, which de facto abolished capital punishment in Canada by restricting it to a few capital offences for which it was never used, and which themselves were abolished in 1976. With these accomplishments, together with his groundbreaking work at the United Nations and in international diplomacy, Pearson is generally considered among the most influential Canadians of the 20th century and is ranked among the greatest Canadian Prime Ministers.

Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home (pronounced "Hyume"), Baron Home of the Hirsel, (2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995) was a British statesman and Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister from October 1963 to October 1964.

A plot to kidnap Douglas-Home in April 1964 was foiled by the Prime Minister himself. Two left-wing students from the University of Aberdeen followed him to the house of John and Priscilla Buchan, where he was staying. He was alone at the time and answered the door, where the students told him that they planned to kidnap him. He responded, "I suppose you realise if you do, the Conservatives will win the election by 200 or 300." He gave his intending abductors some beer, and they abandoned their plot.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th US President, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 pm in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald firing from a nearby building. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where President Kennedy was pronounced dead about thirty minutes after the shooting.

Oswald was arrested and charged under Texas state law with the murder of Kennedy as well as that of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, who had been fatally shot a short time after the assassination. At 11:21 am on Sunday, November 24, 1963, as live television cameras covered his transfer to the Dallas County Jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, though it was later overturned on appeal.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969.

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson succeeded him as president. The following year, Johnson won a landslide in 1964, defeating Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. With 61.1 percent of the popular vote, Johnson won the largest share of the popular vote of any candidate since the largely uncontested 1820 election.

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British Labour politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976.

Wilson's first period as Prime Minister coincided with a period of low unemployment and relative economic prosperity, though hindered by significant problems with Britain's external balance of payments. In 1969 he sent British troops to Northern Ireland. After losing the 1970 election to Edward Heath, he spent four years as Leader of the Opposition before the February 1974 election resulted in a hung parliament. After Heath's talks with the Liberals broke down, Wilson returned to power as leader of a minority government until another general election in October, resulting in a narrow Labour victory.

Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau (October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000) was a Canadian statesman who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada (1968–1979 and 1980–1984). He was the third longest-serving prime minister in Canadian history (behind William Lyon Mackenzie King and John A. Macdonald), having served for 15 years, 164 days.

Trudeau became a media sensation, inspiring "Trudeaumania", and took charge of the Liberals in 1968. From the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, his personality dominated the political scene to an extent never before seen in Canadian political life. Despite his personal motto, "Reason before passion", his personality and political career aroused polarizing reactions throughout Canada.

His eldest son, Justin Trudeau, became the 23rd and current Prime Minister as a result of the 2015 federal election and is the first prime minister of Canada to be a descendant of a former prime minister

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States from 1969 until 1974 and the only president to resign from the position.

Nixon ended American involvement in the war in Vietnam in 1973 and brought the American POWs home, and ended the military draft. Nixon's visit to China in 1972 eventually led to diplomatic relations between the two nations and he initiated détente and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union the same year.

By late 1973, the Watergate scandal escalated, costing Nixon much of his political support. On August 9, 1974, he resigned in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office. After his resignation, he was issued a controversial pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford.

Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Americans Commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle at 20:17 UTC. Armstrong was the first person to step onto the lunar surface, at 02:56:15 UTC; Aldrin joined him 20 minutes later. Michael Collins piloted the command module Columbia in lunar orbit while they were on the surface. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21.5 hours on the lunar surface before rejoining Columbia in lunar orbit.

Armstrong's first step onto the lunar surface was broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience. He described the event as "one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Apollo 11 effectively ended the Space Race and fulfilled a national goal proposed in 1961 by President Kennedy: "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 1916 – 17 July 2005), known as Ted Heath, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975. He was a strong supporter of the European Community (EC), and after winning the decisive vote in the House of Commons by 336 to 244, he led the negotiations that culminated in Britain's entry into the EC on 1 January 1973. It was, says biographer John Campbell, "Heath's finest hour".

Heath's premiership also coincided with the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the suspension of the Stormont Parliament and the imposition of direct British rule. Unofficial talks with Provisional Irish Republican Army delegates were unsuccessful, as was the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973.

The Watergate scandal was a major US political scandal during the early 1970s, following a break-in by five men at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC on June 17, 1972, and President Richard Nixon's administration's attempt to cover up its involvement. After the five burglars were caught, and the conspiracy was discovered - chiefly through the work of a few journalists, Congressional staffers and an election-finance watchdog official - Watergate was investigated by the US Congress.

The scandal led to the discovery of multiple abuses of power by members of the Nixon administration, the commencement of an impeachment process against the president, and Nixon's resignation.

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British Labour politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976.

Wilson's first period as Prime Minister coincided with a period of low unemployment and relative economic prosperity, though hindered by significant problems with Britain's external balance of payments. In 1969 he sent British troops to Northern Ireland. After losing the 1970 election to Edward Heath, he spent four years as Leader of the Opposition before the February 1974 election resulted in a hung parliament. After Heath's talks with the Liberals broke down, Wilson returned to power as leader of a minority government until another general election in October, resulting in a narrow Labour victory.

Berkshire is one of the "home counties" in England. It was recognised by the Queen as the Royal County of Berkshire in 1957 because of the presence of Windsor Castle. In 1974, the towns of Abingdon, Didcot, Faringdon, Wallingford and Wantage and the surrounding villages were transferred to Oxfordshire. This area is Barrett heartlands so you will see many references to these places as part of Berkshire, representing the historical locations.

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from August 1974 to January 1977.

After the resignation of Richard Nixon, Ford automatically assumed the presidency. His 895 day-long presidency is the shortest in U.S. history for any president who did not die in office. As president, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, which marked a move toward détente in the Cold War. He presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession during his tenure. In one of his most controversial acts, he granted a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal.

Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff, (27 March 1912 – 26 March 2005), often known as Jim Callaghan, served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980.

Callaghan is, to date, the only British politician to have served in all four of the Great Offices of State, having been Chancellor of the Exchequer (1964–1967), Home Secretary (1967–1970), and Foreign Secretary (1974–1976) prior to his appointment as Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, he had some successes, but is mainly remembered for the "Winter of Discontent" of 1978–79. During a very cold winter, his battle with trade unions led to immense strikes that seriously inconvenienced the public, leading to his defeat in the polls by Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher. Callaghan was the last Prime Minister born before the First World War.

James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician and philanthropist who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A Democrat, Carter has remained active in public life during his post-presidency, and in 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in co-founding the Carter Center.

On his second day in office, Carter pardoned all the Vietnam War draft evaders. During Carter's term as president, two new cabinet-level departments, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, were established. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Three Mile Island accident occurred on March 28, 1979, in reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (TMI-2) in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. It was the most significant accident in US commercial nuclear power plant history. The incident was rated a five on the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale: Accident with wider consequences.

The accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public, and resulted in new regulations for the nuclear industry. It has been cited to have been a catalyst to the decline of a new reactor construction program, a slowdown that was already underway in the 1970s. The partial meltdown resulted in the release of radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment.

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (née Roberts; 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold that office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her "The 'Iron Lady'", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.

Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession. Her policies emphasised deregulation, flexible labour markets, privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power of trade unions. Her popularity waned amid recession and rising unemployment, but victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support. She survived an assassination attempt in the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge ("poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned in November 1990, after a leadership challenge.

Charles Joseph "Joe" Clark, (born June 5, 1939) is a Canadian elder statesman, businessman, writer, and politician who served as the 16th prime minister of Canada, from June 4, 1979, to March 3, 1980.

Despite his relative inexperience, Clark rose quickly in federal politics, entering the House of Commons in the 1972 election and winning the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1976. He came to power in the 1979 election, defeating the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau and ending sixteen years of continuous Liberal rule. Taking office the day before his 40th birthday, Clark is the youngest person to become Prime Minister. His tenure was brief as he only won a minority government, and it was defeated on a motion of non-confidence. Clark's Progressive Conservative Party lost the 1980 election and Clark lost the leadership of the party in 1983.

Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau (October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000) was a Canadian statesman who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada (1968–1979 and 1980–1984). He was the third longest-serving prime minister in Canadian history (behind William Lyon Mackenzie King and John A. Macdonald), having served for 15 years, 164 days.

Trudeau became a media sensation, inspiring "Trudeaumania", and took charge of the Liberals in 1968. From the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, his personality dominated the political scene to an extent never before seen in Canadian political life. Despite his personal motto, "Reason before passion", his personality and political career aroused polarizing reactions throughout Canada.

His eldest son, Justin Trudeau, became the 23rd and current Prime Minister as a result of the 2015 federal election and is the first prime minister of Canada to be a descendant of a former prime minister

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975. Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth, economic deregulation, and reduction in government spending. In his first term he survived an assassination attempt, spurred the War on Drugs, and fought public sector labor.

Foreign affairs dominated his second term, including ending the Cold War, the bombing of Libya, the Iran–Iraq War, and the Iran–Contra affair. He transitioned Cold War policy from détente to rollback by escalating an arms race with the USSR while engaging in talks with Gorbachev. The talks culminated in the INF Treaty, which shrank both countries' nuclear arsenals.

The British House of Commons passed the Canada Act of 1982. It was adopted by the House of Lords on March 25. The Act ended British legislative jurisdiction over Canada. Queen Elizabeth II signed the proclamation in Ottawa on April 17. (pictured)

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

The Falklands War was a ten-week war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands, and its territorial dependency, the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. It began on Friday, 2 April 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in an attempt to establish the sovereignty it had claimed over them.

On 5 April, the British government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force before making an amphibious assault on the islands. The conflict lasted 74 days and ended with the Argentine surrender on 14 June 1982, returning the islands to British control. In total, 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel, and three Falkland Islanders died during the hostilities.

John Napier Wyndham Turner(born June 7, 1929) is a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 17th prime minister of Canada, in office from June 30 to September 17, 1984.

Turner held the office of prime minister for 79 days (the second shortest tenure in Canadian history after Sir Charles Tupper), as he advised the governor general to dissolve parliament immediately after being sworn in as prime minister, and went on to lose the 1984 election in a landslide. Turner was Canada's first prime minister born in the United Kingdom since Mackenzie Bowell in 1896.

Martin Brian Mulroney (born March 20, 1939) is a Canadian politician who served as the 18th prime minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993.

His tenure as prime minister was marked by the introduction of major economic reforms, such as the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the Goods and Services Tax, and the rejection of constitutional reforms such as the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord. Prior to his political career, he was a prominent lawyer and businessman in Montreal.

The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident. It occurred on 25–26 April 1986 in the No. 4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, approximately 104 km (65 mi) north of Kiev.

The accident is considered the most disastrous nuclear power plant accident in history, both in terms of cost and casualties. It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011.

Pan Am Flight 103 was a scheduled flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via London. The aircraft on the transatlantic leg was destroyed by a bomb, killing 243 passengers and 16 crew. Sections crashed onto Lockerbie, killing 11. Consequently the event is referred to as the Lockerbie Bombing. Eventually, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for life for 270 counts of murder. In August 2009, he was released after being diagnosed with prostate cancer

The World Wide Web, is an information space where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), interlinked by hypertext links, and accessible via the Internet.

English scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He wrote the first web browser in 1990 while employed at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The browser was released outside CERN in 1991, first to other research institutions starting in January 1991 and to the general public on the Internet in August 1991.

George Herbert Walker Bush (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018) was an American politician who served as the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993.

Foreign policy drove the Bush presidency; military operations were conducted in Panama and the Persian Gulf, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union dissolved two years later. Bush also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which created a trade bloc consisting of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Domestically, Bush reneged on a 1988 campaign promise and signed a bill to increase taxes. He lost the 1992 presidential election to Democrat Bill Clinton following an economic recession and the decreased importance of foreign policy in a post–Cold War political climate.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall began the evening of 9 November 1989 and continued over the following days and weeks, with people using various tools to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts in the process, and creating several unofficial border crossings. Television coverage of citizens demolishing sections of the Wall on 9 November was soon followed by the East German regime announcing ten new border crossings, including the historically significant locations of Potsdamer Platz, Glienicker Brücke, and Bernauer Straße. Crowds gathered on both sides of the historic crossings waiting for hours to cheer the bulldozers that tore down portions of the Wall to reconnect the divided roads.

The Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991), codenamed Operation Desert Shield (2 August 1990 – 17 January 1991) for operations leading to the buildup of troops and defense of Saudi Arabia and Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991) in its combat phase, was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes.

The Iraqi Army's occupation of Kuwait began 2 August 1990 and brought immediate economic sanctions against Iraq by members of the UN Security Council. Together with the UK's prime minister Margaret Thatcher, George H W Bush deployed US forces into Saudi Arabia, and urged other countries to send their own forces to the scene. An array of nations joined the coalition, forming the largest military alliance since World War II. The great majority of the coalition's military forces were from the US, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Egypt as leading contributors, in that order.

Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997.

Major became Prime Minister after Thatcher's reluctant resignation in November 1990. He presided over British participation in the Gulf War in March 1991, and negotiated the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991. Heled the Conservatives to a record fourth consecutive electoral victory, winning the most votes in British electoral history at the 1992 general election, albeit with a reduced majority in the House of Commons. Shortly after this his government was responsible for British exit from the ERM after Black Wednesday on 16 September 1992. This event led to a loss of confidence in Conservative economic policies and Major was never able to achieve a lead in opinion polls again.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred on 26 December 1991, officially granting self-governing independence to the Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do so at all. On the previous day, 25 December, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the USSR, resigned, declared his office extinct and handed over its powers to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. At 7:32 pm the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time.

Previously, from August to December all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had either seceded from the union or at the very least denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR also marked the end of the Cold War.

William Jefferson Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III;) (b. August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001.

Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history and signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement . In 1996, Clinton became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to a second full term. In 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice following allegations that he committed perjury and obstructed justice to conceal an affair he had with Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year old White House intern. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in 1999 and completed his term in office.

During the last three years of Clinton's presidency, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus, the first such surplus since 1969. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U.S. military intervention in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, signed the Iraq Liberation Act in opposition to Saddam Hussein, participated in the 2000 Camp David Summit to advance the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, and assisted the Northern Ireland peace process.Clinton has continually scored high in the historical rankings of US presidents, consistently placing in the top third.

Avril Phaedra Douglas "Kim" Campbell (born March 10, 1947) is a Canadian politician, diplomat, lawyer and writer who served as the 19th prime minister of Canada from June 25, 1993 to November 4, 1993. Campbell was the first female prime minister of Canada.

Campbell was also the first baby boomer to hold that office, and the only Prime Minister born in British Columbia. She is Canada's third-shortest serving Prime Minister at 132 days in office. She currently is the chairperson for Canada's Supreme Court Advisory Board.

Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien (born January 11, 1934) is a Canadian politician who served as the 20th prime minister of Canada from November 4, 1993, to December 12, 2003.

He became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in 1990, and led the party to a majority government in the 1993 federal election. He was reelected with further majorities in 1997 and 2000.

Chrétien was strongly opposed to the Quebec sovereignty movement and supported official bilingualism and multiculturalism. He won a narrow victory as leader of the federalist camp in the 1995 Quebec referendum, and then pioneered the Clarity Act to avoid ambiguity in future referendum questions. He also advanced the Youth Criminal Justice Act in Parliament. Although his popularity and that of the Liberal Party were seemingly unchallenged for three consecutive federal elections, he became subject to various political controversies in the later years of his prime-ministership. He was accused of inappropriate behaviour in the Sponsorship scandal, although he has consistently denied any wrongdoing. He also became embroiled in a protracted struggle within the Liberal Party against long-time political rival Paul Martin. He retired as prime minister in December 2003