1982 - The flagship of the British task force to the Falklands, HMS Hermes, arrived back in Portsmouth. Thousands crowded the dockside to see the 1,700 on board disembark 108 days after she had left for her historic mission.

1982 - An IRA terrorist bomb in Hyde Park, London, killed 3 members of the Blues and Royals during the Changing of the Guard ceremony. Two hours later 8 bandsmen were killed by an IRA bomb planted at the bandstand in Regent’s Park.

1941 - Winston Churchill introduced his ‘V for Victory” campaign which rapidly spread through Europe. The BBC took the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which matched the dot-dot-dot-dash Morse code for the letter V, and played it before news bulletins.

1970 - Radio 1 DJ Kenny Everett was sacked after he joked on air that the wife of the conservative transport minister Mary Peyton had ‘crammed a fiver into the examiner’s hand’, when taking her driving test.

1964 - British speed pioneer Sir Donald Campbell set a new land speed world record of 403.10 mph in his car, Bluebird on Lake Eyre in Australia. This record was for wheel-driven vehicles and stood until 2001.

1945 - The Manhattan Project: The world’s first nuclear explosion occurred, when a plutonium implosion device was tested at a site located 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada.

1381 - Poll Tax Triggers the Peasants’ Revolt: John Ball, a leader in the Peasants’ Revolt, is hung, drawn and quartered in the presence of Richard II of England.

1951 - Ferrari secured its first Grand Prix victory at the British Grand Prix at the Silverstone Circuit in Northamptonshire. The winning Ferrari 375 was driven by Argentinian racer, Jose Froilan Gonzalez.

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.