Here's a time line of Margaret Thatcher's life:
- 1925 - Born at Grantham, eastern England
- 1943 - 1947 - Studies chemistry at Oxford's Somerville College
- 1950 - Runs as the Conservative candidate for the strong Labour seat of Dartford at the General Elections
- 1951 - Marries Denis Thatcher, a Dartford businessman
- 1953 - Gives birth to twins - Mark and Carol
- 1959 - Elected to Parliament as Member of Parliament for Finchley, a north London constituency
- 1961 - Given junior office in the administration of Harold Macmillan
- 1964 - Establishes her place among the senior figures of the Conservative Party serving continuously as a shadow minister
- 1970 - Achieves cabinet rank as Education Secretary
- 1975 - Defeats Heath, the then leader of the Conservatives, on the first ballot and wins the contest outright on the second, though challenged by half a dozen senior colleagues
- 1979 - Becomes Prime Minister of the United Kindom the day after the Conservatives won a Parliamentary majority of 43 at the General Election
- 1981 - Britain's economic recovery starts as a result of painful economic measures taken by her government
- 1982 - Wins the Falklands War resulting in the Falklands being back under British control
- 1983 - Re-elected with her government's Parlamentary majority more than trebled (144 seats)
- 1984 - Bombed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in her hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party annual conference, survives unhurt, no twentieth-century British Prime Minister ever came closer to assassination
- 1985 - Negotiates the Anglo-Irish Agreement with the Republic of Ireland to improve security cooperation between Britain and Ireland and to give some recognition to the political outlook of Catholics in Northern Ireland
- 1986 - Subjected to heavy criticism within her own party for the decision to allow US warplanes to fly from British bases to attack targets in Libya
- 1987 - Re-elected with her government's Parlamentary majority of 101 seats
- 1988 - Takes measures to reform the British education system, introducing a national curriculum for the first time
- 1989 - Introduces a new tax system for local government
- 1990 - Introduces legislation to separate purchasers and providers within the National Health Service, opening up the service to a measure of competition for the first time and increasing the scope for effective management
- 1990 - Resignes as Prime Minister as a result of acute divisions over European policy within the British Government by the end of the Cold War
- 1993 - Writes best-selling memoirs - The Downing Street Years and The Path to Power
- 2002 - Publishes a book of reflections on international politics - Statecraft
- 2002 - Announces an end to her career in public speaking
- 2013 - Dies in London, honoured at a ceremonial funeral in St Paul's Cathedral
"And I would just like to remember some words of St. Francis of Assisi which I think are really just particularly apt at the moment. "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope."
--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher