Manchester

Manchester's history began with a civilian settlement beside the Roman fort of Mamucium (or Mancunium), built around AD 79 on a sandstone bluff where the rivers Medlock and Irwell meet. The settlement seems to have been abandoned by the mid-200s, though a small garrison may have stayed at the fort for longer.

In the 1970s a Roman word square was found in Manchester. It may be one of the earliest signs of Christianity in Britain. The fort was first investigated by archaeologists in 1906 and opened to the public in 1984.

In 1055, most of what later became Lancashire was under the control of Tostig.

The Domesday Book of 1086 records Manchester in the hundred of Salford, held by a Norman named Roger of Poitou. The hundred covered about 350 square miles and had about 3,000 people.

Robert Grelley (1174–1230) was the first lord of the manor to actually live in Manchester. His presence brought in skilled workers, such as stonemasons and carpenters, to build his manor house.

In 1223 Manchester gained the right to hold a yearly fair in Acresfield, where St Ann's Square is today. It's recorded as a market in 1282, and became a market town in 1301 when it received its charter.

Around the 1300s, weavers from Flanders came to Manchester. This has sometimes been called the start of the region's textile industry.

By 1421 Thomas de la Warre had founded a collegiate church for the parish, which later became Manchester Cathedral.

The Manchester Grammar School was founded in 1515. By 1540 the writer John Leland called Manchester 'the fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire'.

In 1653 a collection of books became Chetham's Library: the first free public library in the English-speaking world. It's still open and free to use.

Large amounts of cotton were used after about 1600, first mixed with linen. By around 1750 pure cotton fabrics were being made, and cotton had overtaken wool in importance.

The Bridgewater Canal, Britain's first wholly artificial waterway, opened in 1761, bringing coal from the mines at Worsley to central Manchester. It was extended to the Mersey by 1776.

In 1780 Richard Arkwright began building Manchester's first cotton mill. Around the turn of the 1800s the town grew 'at an astonishing rate', without any plan.

In 1803 John Dalton worked out his atomic theory while teaching in the city.

On 16 August 1819 large crowds gathered to protest in St Peter's Square; modern historians estimate 50,000 to 80,000 people. The protest turned to bloodshed.

The Guardian newspaper was founded in the city in 1821, as The Manchester Guardian.

In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened: the world's first intercity passenger railway. By 1838 Manchester was linked by rail with Birmingham and London.

Friedrich Engels, who spent much of his life in and around Manchester, wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 about the city. He met Karl Marx at Chetham's Library.

Manchester became a city on 29 March 1853. That year the number of cotton mills in Manchester reached its peak of 108.

The Co-operative Wholesale Society was formed in 1863, and the first Trades Union Congress met at the Mechanics' Institute in 1868. Manchester was an important centre of the Labour Party, the Chartists and the suffragette movement.

In 1878 the General Post Office gave its first telephones to a firm in Manchester, and in 1879 one of the first telephone exchanges in Europe opened on Faulkner Street.

The Manchester Ship Canal was built between 1888 and 1894. Running 36 miles from Salford to Eastham Locks on the Mersey, it created the Port of Manchester and linked the city to the Irish Sea.

In 1913 Manchester processed 65% of the world's cotton. By 1900 the Manchester city region was the ninth most populous in the world.

At the university, Ernest Rutherford led a team which first discovered the nuclear atom, starting nuclear physics in 1919.

In the Second World War, the biggest air raids on Manchester came on the nights of 22–23 and 24–25 December 1940. The 'Christmas Blitz' destroyed a large part of the historic city centre and seriously damaged the cathedral, which took 20 years to restore.

In 1948 Tom Kilburn, Geoff Tootill and a colleague at the University of Manchester built the world's first stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby. In 2004 Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated graphene there.

In 1954 the BBC opened its first television studio outside London, in a converted chapel in Rusholme. The first Top of the Pops was broadcast from there on New Year's Day 1964.

In the 1980s Manchester was the driving force behind British indie music, led by the Smiths and later the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and James. Oasis formed in the city in 1991.

In 1992 Manchester became the first city in the UK to get a modern light-rail tram system, the Metrolink.

Helped by the 2002 Commonwealth Games, the city centre was extensively rebuilt. The 47-storey Beetham Tower, finished in 2006, was the tallest UK building outside London.