This Day in History - 25th July

1554Queen Mary I married Philip II of Spain at Winchester Cathedral. 

1603James VI of Scotland was crowned as King James I of England, bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union with political union occurring in 1707.

1795The first stone of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct was laid. The aqueduct carries the Llangollen Canal over the valley of the River Dee in Wrexham in north east Wales. It is a Grade I Listed Building, a World Heritage Site and is the longest and highest aqueduct in Britain.

1797British naval commander Horatio Nelson's right arm was shattered by grapeshot during an assault on Tenerife in the battle of Santa Cruz. The injured arm was amputated later. This followed the loss of his sight in his right eye some three years earlier. Nelson's flagship, Victory is now preserved at Portsmouth.

1814The chief engineer at the Killingworth colliery, George Stephenson, unveiled Blücher, his steam powered locomotive that could haul eight carriages loaded with 30 tons of coal at the break-neck speed of 4 mph. Stephenson was born at this house at Wylam, Northumberland which was shared with three other families.

1834 The death of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The years 1797 and 1798, during which he lived at Coleridge Cottage, in Nether Stowey, Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life and where he wrote his notable poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.

1865The death of Dr. James (Jane) Barry, the first woman doctor (because she masqueraded as a man).

1907Sir Robert Baden-Powell began setting up his experimental camp on Brownsea Island near Poole to test the feasibility of Scouting.

1909Frenchman Louis Blériot won the Daily Mail prize for the first successful flight across the English Channel. He made the trip in 37 minutes, landing close to Dover Castle. His success delighted the French but worried the British, who felt that they had suddenly become vulnerable to air attack.

1944The first jet fighter to engage an enemy in combat was a Messerschmitt 262, over Munich, when it was intercepted by a Mosquito of 544 Squadron.

1959A hovercraft, the SR.N1, designed by Christopher Cockerell, made its first English Channel crossing from Dover to Calais. The acronym SR.N1 stood for Saunders-Roe Nautical 1.

1962In London, the Buckingham Palace Art Gallery officially opened to the public.

1978Louise Joy Brown, the first test-tube baby in England, was born at Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester. It had taken 12 years of research by gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and Dr Robert Edwards to make the birth possible. Louise weighed 5lb 12 oz and was delivered by caesarean section.

2002The Queen opened the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. Around one million visitors are thought to have gone to Manchester to see the event live and the world television audience was estimated to top one billion.

2009The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, died, aged 111.