Liverpool

In 2007 evidence of a Roman tile works was found around the Tarbock Island area of the M62, and Roman coins and jewellery have been found in the Liverpool area.

The name Liverpool comes from the Old English lifer, meaning thick or muddy water, and pōl, a pool or creek. It's first recorded around 1190, as Liuerpul.

On 28 August 1207 King John issued letters patent announcing a new borough, 'Livpul', and inviting settlers. It was probably created as a convenient place to send men and supplies for his Irish campaigns.

Liverpool Castle was built by about 1235, and the town became a place to send troops to Ireland. The castle stood until it was demolished in the 1720s.

St Nicholas Church was built by 1257, first as a chapel in the parish of Walton-on-the-Hill. For several centuries Liverpool stayed a small town, with no more than 1,000 people in the mid-1300s.

In the English Civil War the Roundheads captured Liverpool in 1643. In June 1644 Prince Rupert of the Rhine arrived with 10,000 men to try to capture Liverpool Castle for the King.

The first cargo from the Americas was recorded in 1648. After 1660 trade with America and the West Indies grew: cloth, coal and salt from Lancashire and Cheshire were exchanged for sugar and tobacco, and the town's first sugar refinery opened in 1667.

In 1699 the first known slave ship sailed from Liverpool. By the end of the 1700s, slave ships from Liverpool's docks accounted for 80% of Britain's activity in the Atlantic slave trade, and 40% of the world's. In the peak year of 1799 they carried over 45,000 enslaved people from Africa. By the last recorded voyage, in 1862, 4,973 slaving voyages had left Liverpool.

In 1715 Liverpool built the world's first enclosed wet dock, the Old Dock. It was the first of the city's docks, which grew into a large, connected system.

The Bluecoat Hospital for poor children was established in 1718.

The Town Hall, with a covered exchange for merchants designed by the architect John Wood, was built in 1754. At the top of Castle Street, it's the oldest building in the city's commercial district.

The Liverpool-born politician William Roscoe, member for Liverpool in 1806–1807, voted for the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Fines did little to stop the trade at first: 29 slaving voyages left Liverpool in 1808. The Slave Trade Felony Act of 1811 brought in effective penalties, and after that only one more slaving voyage from Liverpool is recorded, in 1862.

In 1813, 10 per cent of Liverpool's people were Welsh, and the city became known as 'the capital of North Wales'.

In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened: the world's first inter-urban rail link, joining two cities, with the first journey of Stephenson's Rocket. The world's first railway tunnels were built under Liverpool in 1829 and 1836.

Lime Street station opened in 1836. It's the world's oldest main line terminus station still in use.

The Grand National steeplechase was first run at Aintree in 1837.

The Royal Albert Dock was built in 1846: the first non-combustible warehouse system. Today it has the largest single collection of Grade I listed buildings anywhere in Britain.

During and after the Great Irish Famine of the mid-1800s, up to two million Irish people travelled to Liverpool within one decade, and many went on to the United States. By 1851 more than 20 per cent of Liverpool's people were Irish.

In 1847 James Newlands was appointed the UK's first borough engineer. He built the world's first integrated sewer system in Liverpool.

At times during the 1800s Liverpool was wealthier than London, and its Custom House was the single largest contributor to the British Exchequer. As early as 1851 the city was described as 'the New York of Europe'.

Between 1862 and 1867 Liverpool held a yearly Grand Olympic Festival. The programme of the first modern Olympics, in Athens in 1896, was almost identical to Liverpool's.

In 1864 Peter Ellis built Oriel Chambers, the world's first iron-framed, curtain-walled office building. This way of building became a defining feature of skyscrapers around the world.

Compton House, finished in 1867, was the UK's first purpose-built department store. In 1879 the first Christmas grotto opened in Lewis's department store, an idea of the retail entrepreneur David Lewis.

Liverpool was granted city status in 1880, and the following year its university was established.

The shipowner Sir Alfred Lewis Jones brought bananas to the UK through Liverpool's docks in 1884.

The Mersey Railway opened in 1886. It had the world's first tunnel under a tidal estuary and the world's first deep-level underground stations, including James Street.

In 1887 William Abdullah Quilliam, a lawyer who had become a Muslim, set up the Liverpool Muslim Institute in a terraced house on West Derby Road. It was the earliest mosque in England.

In 1889 the borough engineer John Alexander Brodie invented the football goal net.

Everton was the city's original senior football club, and Liverpool FC was formed in 1892. By 1990 Liverpool FC had won more major trophies than any other English club.

In 1897 the Lumière brothers filmed Liverpool, including what's believed to be the world's first tracking shot. It was taken from the Liverpool Overhead Railway, the world's first elevated electric railway.

Liverpool inventor Frank Hornby made three of the most popular toy lines of the 1900s: Meccano and Hornby Model Railways (both in 1901), and Dinky Toys in 1934.

The Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse, north of the city centre, was the world's largest building by area when it was built in 1901. Today it's the world's largest brick-work building.

The first British Nobel Prize was awarded in 1902 to Ronald Ross, a professor at Liverpool's School of Tropical Medicine, the first school of its kind in the world.

In 1904 building began on the Anglican Cathedral, and by 1916 the three Pier Head buildings, including the Liver Building, were complete.

The British Interplanetary Society was founded in Liverpool in 1933 by Phillip Ellaby Cleator. It's the world's oldest existing organisation devoted to promoting spaceflight.

As more people drove cars, the city's streets became congested. In 1934 the first Mersey road tunnel opened, giving the city its first direct road link with the Wirral Peninsula.

In the Second World War there were eighty air raids on Merseyside. A concentrated series of raids in May 1941 interrupted work at the docks for almost a week. Since 1952 Liverpool has been twinned with Cologne in Germany, a city that also suffered severe bombing in the war.

From 1950 to 1951 the world's first scheduled passenger helicopter service ran between Liverpool and Cardiff.

Since the mid-1900s, people from Liverpool have mostly been called Scousers, a name closely linked to the city's Scouse accent and dialect. Before that they had other names, including Liverpudlian, first recorded in 1833, and Liverpolitan.

In the 1960s Liverpool was the centre of the 'Merseybeat' sound, whose best-known band is the Beatles. The city is most famous as the birthplace of the Beatles.

From the mid-1970s Liverpool's docks and traditional industries declined, and many jobs were lost. In the late 1980s a regenerated Albert Dock opened, which helped spark more regeneration.

In 2002 Liverpool Airport was renamed after Beatle and Liverpudlian John Lennon: the first British airport named after a person.

Liverpool was the European Capital of Culture in 2008, reportedly bringing over £800 million into the local economy within a year.

In May 2023 Liverpool hosted the Eurovision Song Contest at Liverpool Arena, on behalf of the previous year's winner, Ukraine. It was the first time the contest had come to the city.