28 April – suffragette arson attack on the Bath Hotel, Felixstowe.[7]
4 May – suffragette Mary Wood attacks John Singer Sargent's portrait of Henry James at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London with a meat cleaver. At the same exhibition on 12 May, Gertrude Mary Ansell attacks the recently deceased Hubert von Herkomer's portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and on 26 May 'Mary Spencer' (Maude Kate Smith) attacks George Clausen's painting Primavera.[8]
29 June – international exhibition opens at the "White City", Ashton Gate, Bristol. It closes on 15 August and the site is used as a military depot.[10]
14 July – the Government of Ireland Bill completes its passage through the House of Lords. It allows Ulster counties to vote on whether or not they wish to participate in Home Rule from Dublin.
21–24 July – a conference at Buckingham Palace (called by the King on 19 July) fails to resolve differences between Irish unionists and nationalists over Home Rule.
26 July – Howth gun-running: former British civil servant and novelist Erskine Childers and his wife Molly sail into Howth in Ireland in his yacht Asgard and land 2,500 guns for the nationalist Irish Volunteers from a German dealer. Troops of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, returning to Dublin having been called out to assist police in attempting to prevent the Volunteers from moving the arms to the city, perpetrate the Bachelor's Walk massacre, firing on a crowd of protestors at Bachelors Walk, killing three; a fourth man dies later from bayonet wounds and more than 30 others are injured.[12]
Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, makes a speech which encourages the House of Commons to support going to war with Germany. This evening, looking from the Foreign Office windows, he observes, "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
Banks remain closed until 7 August.
English language teacher Henry Hadley is shot in an altercation with a Prussian officer on a train at Gelsenkirchen in Germany, dying two days later, just 3 hours after the UK declares war on Germany.
Currency and Bank Notes Act gives wartime powers of banknote issue to HM Treasury; the first notes, with the signature of John Bradbury, are issued on 7 August. The sovereign rapidly vanishes from circulation.
21 August – World War I: reconnaissance cyclist Private John Parr (aged 17) becomes the first British soldier to be killed on the Western Front, at Obourg in Belgium.
30 August – World War I: "Amiens Dispatch" – in a special Sunday edition The Times newspaper publishes the first news of the Great Retreat (from its war correspondent Arthur Moore).
18 September – the Government of Ireland Act, granting home rule to the whole of Ireland, and the Welsh Church Act, disestablishing the Church in Wales, receive royal assent (although George V has contemplated refusing the Irish act)[20] but implementation of both is postponed for the duration of World War I[5] by the simultaneous Suspensory Act. The Government of Ireland Act in practice never comes into effect in its original form, and Welsh disestablishment is deferred until 1920.
15 October – World War I: HMSHawke(1891) is torpedoed by German submarine U-9 in the North Sea and sinks in less than 10 minutes with the loss of 524 lives.
17 October – London anti-German riots break out in Deptford.[21]
19 October–22 November – World War I: First Battle of Ypres: British and French forces are victorious against the Germans at Ypres in Belgium.
27 October – World War I: the British super-dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious (23,400 tons), is sunk off Tory Island, north-west of Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin, a loss not officially admitted until the end of the war.
30 October – the SSRohilla, requisitioned as a military hospital ship, is lost by grounding in a storm on rocks off Whitby with the loss of 85 lives.
1 November – World War I: Battle of Coronel fought – a Royal Navy squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock is met in the eastern Pacific and defeated by superior German forces led by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee in the first British naval defeat of the war, resulting in the loss of HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth and 1,660 fatalities (including Cradock).
6 November – World War I: German reservist Carl Hans Lody becomes the first spy to be executed for war treason during the War, suffering execution at dawn by firing squad in the Tower of London, the first execution for treason here since 1747.
17 November – announcement that income tax is to be doubled as a result of the War.[22]
26 November – HMSBulwark(1899) is blown apart by an internal explosion at her moorings on the Medway off Kingsnorth, Kent, killing all but nine of her 805 crew.[23]
16 December – World War I: German naval raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby.[25] 137 are killed by bombardment, mostly civilians, but including the first death of a Kitchener volunteer, Theo Jones.
21 December – World War I: First bombing raid on Britain when a German floatplane drops bombs in Dover Harbour.[27]
24 December – World War I:
British and German soldiers begin an unofficial Christmas truce.
Britain's mainland is bombed for the first time when a German floatplane drops a bomb on Dover.[6]
25 December – World War I: Cuxhaven Raid – British aircraft launched from warships attack the German port of Cuxhaven with submarine support, although little damage is caused. A German floatplane flies up the Thames and drops bombs at Cliffe, Kent.[27]
Unknown dates
Official importation of Friesian cattle which is influential in establishing them as an eminent long-living dairy breed in Britain.