Read it through once

The death of Queen Victoria and the accession of King Edward were the first and perhaps the greatest events in the opening year of the new century. Before the formal announcement on January 18th, 1901, which stated that the Queen was not in her usual health and that "the great strain upon her powers" during the past year had told upon Her Majesty's nervous system, the people in Great Britain, in Canada, in Australia, in all the Isles of the Sea and on the shores of a vast and scattered Empire, had become so accustomed to her presence at the head of the State and to her personality in their hearts and lives that the possibility of her death was regarded with a feeling of shocked surprise.