1943 - The Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history between the forces of Germany and the Soviet Union, involving some 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 troops, and 4,000 aircraft, ended in defeat for Germany.

2017 - Iceberg A-68 broke from the Larsen C Ice Shelf, along the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. At the time, it was the largest iceberg in the world and the sixth-largest berg in three decades of records.

1900 - Charlotte Cooper from Ealing in Middlesex won a gold medal in the women’s tennis singles tournament in the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. She also won a gold medal in the mixed doubles, making her the first individual female Olympic champion.

1997 - More than 100,000 people packed Hyde Park in London for a countryside rally to protest against Government proposals to ban fox hunting.

1984 - A massive fire, caused by a lightning strike, devastated large parts of York Minster causing an estimated £1m damage. Despite the best efforts of the firefighters, who worked tirelessly to save the cathedral, the fire raged for several hours and caused extensive damage to the building.

1996 - A patent was filed by two British scientists to use genetically engineered mosquitoes to immunize their victims against malaria by transferring a protein in their saliva.

2013 - Andy Murray won his first Wimbledon title and ended Britain’s 77 year wait for a men’s champion with a victory over world number one Novak Djokovic. The Scot won 6-4, 7-5 and 6-4.

1988 - An explosion aboard the North Sea oil rig Piper Alpha, off the coast of Aberdeen, resulted in the loss of 167 lives. It is the world’s deadliest ever oil rig accident.

2012 - The Shard, Europe’s tallest building to date and ‘a gleaming feat of glass and gravity-defying engineering’, was officially unveiled in London.