The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval engagement fought by the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars. As part of an overall French plan to combine all French and allied fleets to take control of the English Channel and enable Napoleon's Grande Armée to invade England and Spanish fleets under French Admiral Villeneuve sailed from the port of Cádiz in the south of Spain on 18 October 1805, they encountered the British fleet under Admiral Lord Nelson assembled to meet this threat, in the Atlantic Ocean along the southwest coast of Spain, off Cape Trafalgar, near the town of Los Caños de Meca. Villeneuve was uncertain about engaging, the Franco-Spanish fleet failed to organize. In contrast, Nelson was decisive, organizing the British fleet into two columns sailing straight into the enemy to pierce its wavering lines. In a fierce battle, 27 British ships of the line fought 33 Spanish ships of the line.

Although the lead ships of the British columns were battered, with Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory nearly disabled, the greater experience and training of the Royal Navy overcame the greater numbers of the French and Spanish navies. The Franco-Spanish fleet lost 22 ships. During the battle, Nelson was shot by a French musketeer, he died shortly before the battle ended. Villeneuve was captured along with his flagship Bucentaure, he attended Nelson's funeral while a captive on parole in Britain. Admiral Federico Gravina, the senior Spanish flag officer, escaped with the remnant of the fleet, he died five months from wounds sustained during the battle. The victory confirmed the naval supremacy Britain had established during the course of the eighteenth century, it was achieved in part through Nelson's departure from the prevailing naval tactical orthodoxy of the day. Conventional practice at the time was for opposing fleets to engage each other in single parallel lines in order to facilitate signalling and disengagement and to maximize fields of fire and target areas.

Nelson instead arranged his ships into columns sailing perpendicularly into the enemy fleet's line. In 1805, the First French Empire, under Napoleon Bonaparte, was the dominant military land power on the European continent, while the British Royal Navy controlled the seas. During the course of the war, the British imposed a naval blockade on France, which affected trade and kept the French from mobilising their naval resources. Despite several successful evasions of the blockade by the French navy, it failed to inflict a major defeat upon the British, who were able to attack French interests at home and abroad with relative ease; when the Third Coalition declared war on France, after the short-lived Peace of Amiens, Napoleon was determined to invade Britain. To do so, he needed to ensure that the Royal Navy would be unable to disrupt the invasion flotilla, which would require control of the English Channel; the main French fleets were at Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. Other ports on the French Atlantic coast harboured smaller squadrons.

France and Spain were allied, so the Spanish fleet based in Cádiz and Ferrol was available. The British possessed an well-trained corps of naval officers. By contrast, some of the best officers in the French navy had either been executed or had left the service during the early part of the French Revolution. Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve had taken command of the French Mediterranean fleet following the death of Latouche Treville. There had been more competent officers, but they had either been employed elsewhere or had fallen from Napoleon's favour. Villeneuve had shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for facing Nelson and the Royal Navy after the French defeat at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Napoleon's naval plan in 1805 was for the French and Spanish fleets in the Mediterranean and Cádiz to break through the blockade and join forces in the Caribbean, they would return, assist the fleet in Brest to emerge from the blockade, together clear the English Channel of Royal Navy ships, ensuring a safe passage for the invasion barges.

Early in 1805, Vice Admiral Lord Nelson commanded the British fleet blockading Toulon. Unlike William Cornwallis, who maintained a close blockade off Brest with the Channel Fleet, Nelson adopted a loose blockade in the hope of luring the French out for a major battle. However, Villeneuve's fleet evaded Nelson's when the British were blown off station by storms. Nelson commenced a search of the Mediterranean, erroneously supposing that the French intended to make for Egypt. However, Villeneuve took his fleet through the Strait of Gibraltar, rendezvoused with the Spanish fleet, sailed as planned for the Caribbean. Once Nelson realised that the French had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, he set off in pursuit. Villeneuve returned from the Caribbean to Europe, intending to break the blockade at Brest, but after two of his Spanish ships were captured during the Battle of Cape Finisterre by a squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Calder, Villeneuve abandoned this plan and sailed back to Ferrol in northern Spain.

There he received orders from Napoleon to return to Brest according to the main plan. Napoleon's invasion plans for Britain depended on having a sufficiently large number of ships of the line before Boulogne in France; this would require Villeneuve's force of 33 ships to join Vice-Admiral Ganteaume's force of 21 ships at Brest, along with a squadron of five ships under Captain Allemand, which would have given him a combined force of 59 ships of the line. When Villeneuve set sail from Ferrol on 10 August, he was under orders from Napoleon to sail northward to

Nathaniel Oglesby Calloway was an American chemist and physician. Calloway was the first African American to receive an academic doctorate from an institute west of the Mississippi and the first African American to receive a PhD in chemistry from Iowa State University. Calloway was born on October 1907 in Tuskegee, Alabama, he was one of five children born to his father James N, a former slave. His father graduated from Fisk University in Tennessee when he was 30 years old. Additionally, he was an associate of Booker T. Washington, his father served in Africa for the German government as an industrial colonizer. Calloway's early education of elementary and high school was conducted in Alabama, he studied at Iowa State University and completed his B. S. in 1930 followed by his Ph. D in 1933. Calloway was the first African American to earn a Ph. D. in chemistry from Iowa State University. Spending most of his time in the Department of Chemistry as a graduate student, Calloway studied synthetic organic chemistry.

Calloway’s Ph. D. adviser was Henry Gilman, a well-known organic chemistry professor at Iowa State University, advocate for African American chemistry majors. Calloway was an organic chemist, military officer, educator. After getting his Ph. D. Calloway became head of the chemistry department at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Calloway was a professor at the University of Illinois Medical School and wrote more than 30 scientific articles and publications in scientific journals, he served as a medical director of Provident Hospital in Chicago until 1949, founded the Medical Associates Clinic of Chicago. Calloway became the chief of medical services for Veterans Administration Hospital in Tomah, Wisconsin

York Cottage is a house in the grounds of Sandringham House in Norfolk, England. The cottage was called the Bachelor's Cottage, built as an overflow residence for Sandringham House. In 1893, it was given by the future King Edward VII the Prince of Wales, as a wedding gift to his son Prince George, the Duke of York, who lived there with his wife, the future Queen Mary, after their marriage; the couple lived there for 33 years until the death of Queen Alexandra in 1925. George V loved York Cottage, said to resemble "three Merrie England pubs joined together." He furnished it himself with furniture purchased from Co. furniture store. “Too large and too full of footmen to be unremarkable in Surbiton or Upper Norwood, York Cottage in its own context is a monument to the eccentricity of the family who lived there,” Lady Donaldson wrote of the cottage. Today, York Cottage is the estate office for Sandringham.