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Ethelbert, the King of Kent, is baptized. He is the first English king to convert to Christianity.
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Augustine was the prior of a monastery in Rome when Pope Gregory the Great chose him in 595 to lead a mission, usually known as the Gregorian mission, to Britain to Christianize King Æthelberht.
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Beowulf The style of Beowulf is plain-spoken and inventive. The poem’s language is richly physical, with a particular emphasis on bodies and their fragility
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The monk who composed (in Latin) The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a key source of information about Anglo Saxon settlement.
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The Viking raids and subsequent settlements define the period known as the Viking Age in Britain which had profound consequences on the development of the culture and language.
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The 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and men from other provinces of the Kingdom of France, all led by the Duke of Normandy later styled William the Conqueror. William's claim to the English throne derived from his familial relationship with the childless Anglo-Saxon.
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The University of Cambridge is formed by scholars from Oxford.
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a critical document in the long historical process leading to the rule of constitutional law in the English-speaking world.
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The Statute of Pleading makes English the official language in England. Parliament is opened with its first speech delivered in English.
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A collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400.
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Christopher is credited with discovering the Americas in 1492 Americans get a day off work on October 10 to celebrate Columbus Day.
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The first grammar of English—William Bullokar's Pamphlet for Grammar—is published.
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Weekly News, the first English newspaper, is published in London.
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The First Folio is the first collected edition of William Shakespeare's plays, collated and published in 1623, seven years after his death.
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Samuel Johnson publishes his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language.
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The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution which occurred in colonial North America between 1765 and 1783.
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Noah Webster publishes his American Spelling Book.
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A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium, thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink, and accelerated the process.
