Birmingham

From the records: “The oldest human artefact found within Birmingham is the Saltley Handaxe: a 500,000-year-old brown quartzite hand axe about 100 millimetres (3.9 in) long, discovered in the gravels of the River Rea at Saltley in 1892.”

From the records: “A 10,400-year-old settlement – the oldest within the city – was excavated in the Digbeth area in 2009, with evidence that hunter-gatherers with basic flint tools had cleared an area of forest by burning.”

From the records: “The many burnt mounds that can still be seen around the city indicate that modern humans first intensively settled and cultivated the area during the Bronze Age, when a substantial but short-lived influx of population occurred between 1700 BC and 1000 BC, possibly caused by conflict or immigration in the surrounding area.”

From the records: “During the 1st-century Roman conquest of Britain, the forested country of the Birmingham Plateau formed a barrier to the advancing Roman legions, who built the large Metchley Fort in the area of modern-day Edgbaston in AD 48, and made it the focus of a network of Roman roads.”

From the records: “Place names ending in -ingahām are characteristic of primary settlements established during the early phases of Anglo-Saxon colonisation of an area, suggesting that Birmingham was probably in existence by the early 7th century at the latest.”

From the records: “The transformation of Birmingham from the purely rural manor recorded in Domesday Book started decisively in 1166, with the purchase by the lord of the manor, Peter de Birmingham, of a royal charter from Henry II permitting him to hold a weekly market "at his castle at Birmingham", and to charge tolls on the market's traffic.”

From the records: “St Martin in the Bull Ring was rebuilt on a lavish scale around 1250 with two aisles, a clerestory and a 200 ft (61 m) high spire, and two chantries were endowed in the church by wealthy local merchants in 1330 and 1347.”

From the records: “The signing of Letters patent indicate visits by the King to Birmingham in 1189, 1235 and 1237, and two burgesses were summoned to represent the town in Parliament in 1275.”

From the records: “More traditional industries also remain: 40% of the jewellery made in the UK is still produced by the 300 independent manufacturers of the city's Jewellery Quarter, continuing a trade first recorded in Birmingham in 1308.”

From the records: “Famines of 1315 to 1322 and the Black Death of 1348–50 halted the growth in population and the decline in archaeological evidence of pottery from the 14th and 15th centuries may indicate a prolonged period of economic hardship.”

From the records: “The parish of Birmingham gained its own religious guild with the foundation in 1392 of the Guild of the Holy Cross, which provided a social and political focus for the elite of the town as well as supporting chaplains, almshouses, a midwife, a clock, the bridge over the River Rea and "divers ffoule and daungerous high wayes".”

From the records: “The principal institutions of medieval Birmingham collapsed within the space of eleven years between 1536 and 1547.”

From the records: “By 1600 Birmingham ranked alongside London as one of the two great concentrations of iron merchants in the country, flourishing from its economic freedom and its proximity to manufacturers and raw materials, while London's traders remained under the control of a powerful corporate body.”

From the records: “The town's reputation for political radicalism and its strongly Parliamentarian sympathies saw it attacked by Royalist forces in the Battle of Birmingham in 1643, and it developed into a centre of Puritanism in the 1630s and as a haven for Nonconformists from the 1660s.”

From the records: “The town's first newspaper was the Birmingham Journal founded in 1732; it was short-lived but notable as the vehicle for the first published work of Samuel Johnson.”

From the records: “In 1732 Lewis Paul and John Wyatt invented roller spinning – the "one novel idea of the first importance" in the development of the mechanised cotton industry – and in 1741 they opened the world's first cotton mill in Birmingham's Upper Priory.”

From the records: “During the early 18th century finance was largely provided by the iron merchants and by extensive systems of trade credit between manufacturers; it was an iron merchant Sampson Lloyd and major manufacturer John Taylor who combined to form the town's first bank – the early Lloyds Bank – in 1765.”

From the records: “Ketley's Building Society, the world's first building society, founded at the Golden Cross in Snow Hill in 1775; the Birmingham Book Club, whose radical politics saw it nicknamed the "Jacobin Club", and which alongside other debating societies such as the Birmingham Free Debating Society and the Amicable Debating Society played a prominent role in the growing expression of popular political consciousness within the town; and the more conservative Birmingham Bean Club, a dining club uniting leading loyalist figures in the town with prominent landowners from the surrounding counties, which played a prominent role in the emergence of a distinct "Birmingham interest" in regional politics from 1774.”

From the records: “Most significant, however, was the development in 1776 of the industrial steam engine by James Watt and Matthew Boulton.”

From the records: “This led to exceptional levels of inventiveness: between 1760 and 1850 – the core years of the Industrial Revolution – Birmingham residents registered over three times as many patents as those of any other British town or city.”

From the records: “Birmingham rose to national political prominence in the campaign for political reform in the early 19th century, with Thomas Attwood and the Birmingham Political Union bringing the country to the brink of civil war during the Days of May that preceded the passing of the Reform Act 1832.”

From the records: “Birmingham was the terminus for both of the world's first two long-distance railway lines: the 82-mile (132 km) Grand Junction Railway of 1837 and the 112-mile (180 km) London and Birmingham Railway of 1838.”

From the records: “Birmingham schoolteacher Rowland Hill invented the postage stamp and created the first modern universal postal system in 1839.”

From the records: “Alexander Parkes invented the first human-made plastic in the Jewellery Quarter in 1855.”

From the records: “Some buildings of the 19th century included: the Birmingham Town Hall completed in 1834, the Birmingham Botanical Gardens opened in 1832, the Council House built in 1879, and the Museum and Art Gallery in the extended Council House, opened in 1885.”

From the records: “The city established its own university in 1900.”

From the records: “The Electric on Station Street opened on 27 December 1909, and is the oldest independent working cinema in the UK, continuing to operate despite multiple threats of closure over the years.”

From the records: “Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls first described how a practical nuclear weapon could be constructed in the Frisch–Peierls memorandum of 1940, the same year that the cavity magnetron, the key component of radar and later of microwave ovens, was invented by John Randall and Harry Boot.”

From the records: “The city's population peaked in 1951 at 1,113,000 residents.”

From the records: “During the 1960s, Birmingham was the home of a music scene comparable to that of Liverpool.”

From the records: “Since 2001, Birmingham has been host to the Frankfurt Christmas Market.”

From the records: “A new Library of Birmingham in Centenary Square, replacing Central Library, was opened on 3 September 2013.”

From the records: “Birmingham hosted the 2022 Commonwealth Games, which took place between 28 July and 8 August 2022.”