* 1907 – Count Alexander Izvolsky and Sir Arthur Nicolson sign the St. Petersburg Convention, which results in the Triple Entente alliance.

* Charles Dickens used Selkirk as a simile in Chapter Two of The Pickwick Papers: " Colonel Builder and Sir Thomas Clubber exchanged snuff – boxes, and looked very much like a pair of Alexander Selkirks — ' Monarchs of all they surveyed.

Sir Alexander Fleming, FRSE, FRS, FRCS ( Eng ) ( 6 August 188111 March 1955 ) was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist.

The Sir Alexander Fleming Building on the South Kensington campus was opened in 1998 and is now one of the main preclinical teaching sites of the Imperial College School of Medicine.

* The Life Of Sir Alexander Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1959.

Sir Stafford Cripps, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Irving and other stage grandees, Lord Lytton and other eminent people of the era also wrote positive appreciations of his work after taking lessons with Alexander.

In February 1705, Queen Anne, who had made Marlborough a Duke in 1702, granted him the Park of Woodstock and promised a sum of £ 240, 000 to build a suitable house as a gift from a grateful crown in recognition of his victory – a victory which British historian Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy considered one of the pivotal battles in history, writing – " Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability.

During the Anglo-French War ( 1627 – 1629 ), under Charles I, by 1629 the Kirkes took Quebec City, Sir James Stewart of Killeith, Lord Ochiltree planted a colony on Cape Breton Island at Baleine, Nova Scotia and Alexander ’ s son, William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling established the first incarnation of “ New Scotland ” at Port Royal.

In 1613, Virginian raiders captured Port Royale, and in 1621 Acadia was ceded to Scotland's Sir William Alexander who renamed it Nova Scotia.

Through such people as Nikola Tesla, Galileo Ferraris, Oliver Heaviside, Thomas Edison, Ottó Bláthy, Ányos Jedlik, Sir Charles Parsons, Joseph Swan, George Westinghouse, Ernst Werner von Siemens, Alexander Graham Bell and Lord Kelvin, electricity was turned from a scientific curiosity into an essential tool for modern life, becoming a driving force for the Second Industrial Revolution.

Other notable figures in the movement include Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan ( who together initiated the Great Books program at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland ), Mark Van Doren, Alexander Meiklejohn, and Sir Richard Livingstone, an English classicist with an American following.

Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon ( 1817 – 1890 ), eldest son of the second marriage of the fourth Earl, was a General in the Army and sat as Member of Parliament for Aberdeenshire East.

His eldest son, Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon was also a General in the Army.

She married Sir Alexander Seton ( d. 1438 ) and was the mother of Alexander Gordon, 1st Earl of Huntly ( ancestor of the Marquesses of Huntly ).

* 1926 – Sir Alexander Gibson, Scottish conductor ( d. 1995 )

They decided to replace Auchinleck, appointing XIII Corps commander William Gott to the Eighth Army command and General Sir Harold Alexander as C-in-C Middle East Command.

Aberdeen's second son was General Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon ; his third son was the Reverend Douglas Hamilton-Gordon ; and his youngest son Arthur Gordon was created Baron Stanmore in 1893.

Allied leaders of the Sicilian campaign in North Africa ; ( front row, left to right ) General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder | Arthur Tedder, General Sir Harold Alexander, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope | Andrew Cunningham, ( top row, left to right ) Harold Macmillan, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, and unidentified British officers ; 1943

Sir John Alexander Macdonald, ( 11 January 1815 – 6 June 1891 ), was the first Prime Minister of Canada.

* Sir Alexander Hamilton ( d. bef.

In 1789 Sir Alexander Mackenzie followed the river named after him to the Arctic Ocean.

Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt, GCMG, PC ( September 6, 1817 – September 19, 1893 ) was a politician and a father of Canadian Confederation.

* Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt

As a banker, he strongly disagreed with the government ’ s proposed measures to widen its fiscal powers during the late 1860s, and in 1866 he attacked Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt ’ s recommendations for tariff reductions, fearing it would bring " beggary or emigration " for many Canadians.

He joined Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt and Elliot Torrance Galt in their western industrial enterprises as a surveyor, later becoming Elliott's assistant and Land Commissioner of the North Western Coal and Navigation Company.

The motion succeeded, and Alexander Galt, John Ross, and Sir George-Étienne Cartier went to London to begin the long process of convincing the British to make British North America into the first sovereign Dominion within the British Empire.

Today, Sir Galt has a street name after him.

Sir Alexander Galt and his son Elliott Torrance Galt co-founded the city of Lethbridge, Alberta in 1883, when he established a coal mine on the banks of the Oldman River in the southwest portion of the District of Alberta, Northwest Territories.

Sir Alexander Galt laid out the street plan of Lethbridge's present location in 1885 after his settlement was moved to the prairie level from the river valley.

Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier dedicated the Galt Hospital addition, which houses the Galt Museum, in 1910.

* Sir Alexander Galt ( 1817-1893 ), businessman, statesman, Father Of Confederation

* Galt House, Simpson Street ; built in the 1860s for Sir Alexander Galt, later lived in by the Caverhills, since demolished

In 1899, he married Mabel Lillian Galt, a daughter of Sir Alexander and half-sister of Elliot Galt.

This setback for Parliament in Cornwall, and the last major victory for the Royalists, was reversed by Sir Thomas Fairfax leading the New Model Army at or near Tresillian Bridge, close to Truro on 12 March 1645.

Sir Robert Gordon, a younger son of the 3rd Earl of Aberdeen, acquired the lease in 1830 and made major alterations to the castle, with baronial-style extensions designed by John Smith of Aberdeen.

Added to the work of Sir Walter Scott, this was a major factor in promoting the adoption of Highland culture by Lowland Scotlanders.

The next major addition was the White Wing 1882 – 1884 added behind the eastern end of the South Front, the architect being Sir John Taylor.

The British Dental Association, formed in 1880 with Sir John Tomes as president, played a major role in prosecuting dentists practising illegally.

Meanwhile, Sir Francis Drake had undertaken a major voyage against Spanish ports and ships to the Caribbean in 1585 and 1586, and in 1587 had made a successful raid on Cadiz, destroying the Spanish fleet of war ships intended for the Enterprise of England: Philip II had decided to take the war to England.

As part of the fierce diplomatic competition in Ankara in the spring and summer of 1939 between von Papen on the one hand, and on the other the French Ambassador, René Massigli, and the British Ambassador, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, to win the allegiance of Turkey to either the Axis or the Allies, Ribbentrop suffered a major reversal in July 1939 when Massigli was able to arrange for major French arms shipments to Turkey on credit, to replace the weapons the Germans refused to deliver to the Turks.

The current manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, has won 24 major honours since he took over in November 1986.

" Other major melancholic authors include Sir Thomas Browne, and Jeremy Taylor, whose Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial and Holy Living and Holy Dying, respectively, contain extensive meditations on death.

As late as 1414, there were rumours that the Herefordshire-based Lollard leader, Sir John Oldcastle, was communicating with Owain and reinforcements were sent to the major castles in the north and south.

Britain and British seafarers – including Sir Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Frobisher and Captain Brown — played a major role in the transatlantic trade in captured Africans between 1530 and 1810.

The Duke at the time, the founder and colonel of the regiment, was the Duchess of Richmond's father, and he saw no active service overseas during the Napoleonic Wars ; his son and the Duchess's brother, the Marquis of Huntly ( later the 5th Duke ) was a distinguished general, but also missed the Waterloo campaign ; the senior representative of the family at the battle was in fact the Duchess's own twenty-three-year-old son, the Earl of March, who would eventually become the 5th Duke's heir in 1836, and who served as a major and an aide de camp to the Duke of Wellington ; another branch of the family was represented by another ADC, Colonel Sir Alexander Gordon, aged twenty-eight or twenty-nine, the brother of the Earl of Aberdeen ; in reality, both were young men similar in age and duty to Lord Hay.

Sir Cyril Fox completed the first major survey of the Dyke ( Fox 1955 ), and, in agreement with Asser, theorized that the Dyke ran from the estuary of the River Dee in the north to the River Wye in the south ( approximately 150 miles, or 240 km ).

It was at this point that General Sir Redvers Henry Buller, a much respected commander, arrived in South Africa with major British reinforcements ( including an army corps of three divisions ).

It met almost daily, with Sir Maurice Hankey as secretary, and made all major political, military, economic and diplomatic decisions.

The last major architect who admitted to being dependent on him was Sir Edwin Lutyens, who died in 1944.

The gardens contain two major monuments, one dedicated to Sir Alexander Ball and another in remembrance of the Great Siege of Malta.

The literary convention of courtly love can be found in most of the major authors of the Middle Ages such as Geoffery Chaucer, John Gower, Dante, Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, Gottfried von Strassburg and Sir Thomas Malory.

British historian Frederick Taylor mentions a further memo sent to the Chiefs of Staff Committee by Sir Douglas Evill on 1 February, in which Evill states interfering with mass civilian movements was a major, even key, factor in the decision to bomb the city center.

The only major work that Richardson would write would be A Collection of the Moral and Instruction Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflexions, contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison.

Forty years later Sir Henry Tate who was a sugar magnate and a major collector of Victorian art, offered to fund the building of the gallery to house British Art on the condition that the State pay for the site and revenue costs.

His father had earlier paid for an extension to house the major part of the Turner Bequest, which in 1987 was transferred to a wing paid for by Sir Charles Clore.

* William Marshal is a major character in Sir Ridley Scott's Robin Hood epic who tries to convince King John to agree to the Magna Carta.

Founded in the 7th century, Bath Abbey was reorganised in the 10th century and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries ; major restoration work was carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the 1860s.