1985 - The first episode of the BBC soap opera, EastEnders was screened. 13 million viewers watched as Arthur Fowler, Ali Osman and Den Watts forced their way into Reg Cox’s flat and found Reg near death. Several weeks later Nick Cotton was revealed as Reg’s murderer.

1990 - Freddie Mercury made his final public appearance on stage when he joined the rest of Queen to collect the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.

1955 - Fanny Cradock’s first cookery programme Kitchen Magic, was broadcast on television. She mostly worked with her then common-law husband Johnny Cradock, adopting his surname long before they married.

1923 - Egyptian King Tutankhamun’s coffin was discovered. English archeologist Howard Carter entered the tomb on November 22, where everything was fully intact, untouched for over 3,000 years. Inside there were four rooms, and upon opening the last chamber on this day, they found the golden coffin belonging to King Tutankhamun.

1998 - The Angel of the North, a 66ft tall steel sculpture by Antony Gormley is installed at Low Eighton in Gateshead. Gormley, chose an angel for the sculpture to recognise the sacrifice of the miners who had worked beneath the site of its construction for two centuries.

1984 - British ice skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won the ice dance gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, gaining maximum points for artistic expression.

1996 - Take That split up, the biggest band of the 90s announced their demise in front of the world’s press at The Hilton in Manchester.

2017 - Elaine Hopley, a 45 year old Scottish mother-of-two, broke the solo female record in a prestigious rowing race across the Atlantic.

1990 - Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.