– standard clothing introduced. 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. 1 July – explosion of 8 tons of TNT at the National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell (Nottinghamshire) kills 134; only 32 bodies can be positively identified. 15 July – ration books introduced for butter, margarine, lard, meat and sugar. 17 July – 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. 1 August – British anti-Bolshevik forces occupy Archangel, Russia. On 10 August their commander is told to help White Russians. 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. 30 August – strike of 20,000 London policemen with demands of increased pay and union recognition. 11 September – Gainsborough wins the English Triple Crown by finishing first in the Derby, 2,000 Guineas and (substitute) St Leger. 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. 29 September – first performance of Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets, before an invited audience at the Queen's Hall in London, conducted by Adrian Boult. 6 October – troopship is wrecked off Islay with 351 United States troops and 80 crew lost. 26 October – Cecil Chubb donates Stonehenge to the nation. 27 October–2 November – 2,200 deaths in London over this period due to "Spanish flu". Barnsley is the town with the highest mortality rate from the pandemic. 3 November – armistice with Austria-Hungary signed in Padua. 5 November – former Cunarder HMS Campania sinks in an accident in the Firth of Forth with no loss of life. 9 November – battleship HMS 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. 11 November – World War I ends: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in the "Compiègne Wagon" in France with Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss as British representative. George Edwin Ellison