Frederick Delius completes Brigg Fair, an 'English Rhapsody' for orchestra, first performed in Liverpool in 1908

Samuel Simon, working in Manchester, takes out a patent for the use of silk to support a stencil

The first International Horse Show takes place in London's Olympia stadium

The National Physical Laboratory begins an ongoing and still continuing task, testing for accuracy the meters of taxi cabs

The British liner Lusitania sets a new record for the Atlantic crossing, on the first of four such occasions

The Rugby Football Union buys 8.9 acres of land which becomes known as Billy Williams Cabbage Patch from its former agricultural use.

Robert Baden-Powell publishes Scouting for Boys, the success of which leads to the establishment of the Scouts

Jack London's novel Iron Heel foresees a future repressive capitalist regime in the USA

Rat, Mole and Toad, in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, appeal to a wide readership

A new weekly 'table of diet' is approved by the committee of the National Orphan Home for Females, in Ham

UK prime minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigns because of ill health and is followed as Liberal leader and prime mininster by Herbert Asquith

David Lloyd George becomes chancellor of the exchequer in Asquith's new cabinet

The Liberal government in Britain introduces an old-age pension, albeit only five shillings a week.

The sides and ramp of Kew Pond are concreted and railings erected all round

The Welsh poet W.H. Davies has a success with The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, his account of life on the road and in dosshouses

All Saints is completed, and for thirty years is used for worship as a satellite of St Peter’s, but it is not consecrated

Bernard Leach moves to Japan to study oriental traditions in the graphic arts

Ralph Vaughan Williams sets poems by Housman in On Wenlock Edge

Rugby Union acquires new headquarters and a state-of-the-art stadium at Twickenham

Vaughan Williams first symphony, which he names A Sea Symphony, is first performed at the Leeds Festival

Jack London publishes his most autobiographical novel, Martin Eden

The heroine of H.G. Wells' novel Ann Veronica is a determined example of the New Woman

US entrepreneur Gordon Selfridge opens the first British custom-built department store on London's Oxford Street

Thomas Beecham uses his personal fortune from Beecham's Pills to found his first orchestra, the Beecham Symphony Orchestra

In response to fears of German espionage a Secret Service Bureau, later to be divided into MI5 and MI6, is set up in Britain