28 January – night of unusually heavy bombing in London and south-east England.[1]
31 January – "Battle of May Island": in a confused series of collisions as a large Royal Navy fleet steams down the Firth of Forth this evening, submarines HMS K4 and HMS K17 are sunk, three other submarines and a light cruiser are damaged and 104 men are killed.[2]
6 February – Representation of the People Act gives women the vote provided they are over 30 and are (or are married to) a local government elector. It also removes most property qualifications, giving all adult (over-21) male resident householders the vote, and requires elections to be restricted to a single day.[3] Many conscientious objectors are barred from voting until 5 years after the end of the war.
23 March – in London at the Wood Green Empire, Chung Ling Soo (William E Robinson, US-born magician) dies during his trick where he was supposed to "catch" two separate bullets – one of them perforates his lung. He dies the following morning in hospital.
3 June – GPO raises postage rates: the ordinary letter rate is now 1½d., bringing an end to the Uniform Penny Post which has existed since 1840; and the rate for postcards doubles from ½d. to 1d.[4]
15 July – ration books introduced for butter, margarine, lard, meat and sugar.[1]
17 July – RMS Carpathia is torpedoed and sunk off the east coast of Ireland by Imperial German Navy U-boat SM U-55; 218 of the 223 on board are rescued.[6]
8 August – Education Act (drafted by H. A. L. Fisher) raises the school leaving age in England and Wales to fourteen (with children obliged to attend school full-time) and remits all fees in elementary schools.[1][7]
16 September – HMS Glatton, never having gone into action, is scuttled in Dover Harbour to prevent an accidental fire causing a serious explosion; 79 are killed.[9]
27 October–2 November – 2,200 deaths in London over this period due to "Spanish flu".[1]Barnsley is the town with the highest mortality rate from the pandemic.
9 November – battleshipHMS Britannia is sunk by a German submarine off Trafalgar with the loss of around fifty lives, the last major naval engagement of World War I.
15 November – first released British prisoners of war reach Calais.
20 November – U-boats start to rendezvous off Harwich to begin the surrender of the High Seas Fleet to the Royal Navy; in the following week the German warships are escorted to internment in Scapa Flow.[11]
14 December – general election polling held. It is the first national election in the United Kingdom at which women are entitled to vote or stand, and the male franchise is extended. This is known as the "Coupon election" from the letter of endorsement given to candidates of the official (and victorious) Coalition by Bonar Law and Lloyd George.[3]
^ a b c d e f gPalmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 355–356. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
^""Battle of May Island" remembered". UK Defence Today. Ministry of Defence. 30 January 2002. Archived from the original on 2 February 2002. Retrieved 10 February 2010.
^ a b c d e fPenguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
^Blake, Richard. The Book of Postal Dates, 1635–1985. Caterham: Marden. p. 24.
^Brown, Jonathan (3 July 2014). "A History of the First World War in 100 Moments: When corpses fell from the Nottinghamshire sky". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 1 May 2022. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
^"Carpathia Sunk; 5 of Crew Killed" (PDF). The New York Times. 20 July 1918. p. 4.
^Berry, George (1970). Discovering Schools. Tring: Shire Publications. ISBN 0-85263-091-3.
^"A New Record". Sheffield Evening Telegraph. 11 September 1918. p. 3.
^Buxton, Ian (2008). Big Gun Monitors: Design, Construction and Operations 1914–1945 (2nd ed.). Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-045-0.
^Scott, R. Neil (2012). Many Were Held by the Sea: The Tragic Sinking of HMS Otranto. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-1342-5.
^Biger, Gideon (2004). The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947. London: Routledge. pp. 55, 164. ISBN 978-0-7146-5654-0.
^Wainwright, Martin (23 August 2010). "British warships sunk 90 years ago found off Estonian coast". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 August 2010.
^Nine lessons and carols: History of the service, King's College Chapel, archived from the original on 15 March 2008, retrieved 9 March 2008.
^Ward, Margaret (1983). Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish nationalism. London: Pluto Press. p. 137. ISBN 0-86104-700-1.
^Turner, Jenny (17 April 2006). "Dame Muriel Spark". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 February 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2023.
^Dibble, Jeremy, "Parry, Sir (Charles) Hubert Hastings, baronet (1848–1918)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 18 April 2013 (subscription or UK public library membership required)