1909 - Selfridges store (named after its owner Harry Gordon Selfridge) was opened in London's Oxford Street. In September 1997 they opened their first store outside London when the Trafford Centre (Manchester) opened.

1945 - The 617 Dambuster Squadron of the RAF dropped the heaviest bomb of the war (the 22,000-pound "Grand Slam") on the Bielefeld railway viaduct in Germany.

2015 - Lesley Simpson became the first female Guizer Jarl (chief Viking) in the 130-year history of Shetland's world famous fire festivals. The event is one of several Viking-themed torchlit processions that are held on Shetland every year.

1941 - Islanders on the Hebrides hid thousands of bottles of shipwrecked whisky from government officials. The episode was celebrated in the film "Whisky Galore."

1988 - The Bank of England pound note, first introduced on 12th March 1797, ceased to be legal tender in Britain at midnight.

1914 - Suffragette Mary Richardson slashed Velazquez's painting - 'Rokeby Venus' at London's National Gallery with a meat cleaver as a protest against the Government's treatment of Emmeline Pankhurst.

2015 - Archaeologists began excavating up to 3,000 skeletons from a burial ground under London's Liverpool Street station.

2001 - Donald Campbell's boat, Bluebird, was recovered from the bottom of Coniston Water in Cumbria.

1876 - The Scottish-born inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, patented the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.