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 around 3,000 skeletons from the Bedlam burial ground in London, used from 1569 to at least 1738. Also known as Bethlem and the New Churchyard, more than 20,000 Londoners are believed to have been buried there.

2001 - Donald Campbell's boat, Bluebird, was recovered from the bottom of Coniston Water in Cumbria. Campbell was killed on 4th January 1967 at more than 300 mph whilst attempting to break his own water speed record.

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.

2018 - The world’s oldest message in a bottle was found. The bottle was discovered by a couple walking on a beach in Western Australia.

1936 - The British fighter plane Spitfire made its first test flight from Eastleigh, Southampton, powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. It was designed by Reginald Mitchell and was the fighter plane that helped to win the Battle of Britain. Mitchell died in 1937 without ever knowing how successful his aircraft would become.

1966 - Beatle, John Lennon, caused outrage amongst Christians by stating "We're more popular than Jesus Christ right now. I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity." Beatles' records were consequently banned in many US states and in South Africa.

1995 - A bill which would ban hunting with hounds in England and Wales became the first such proposal to get a second reading in parliament.The Hunting Act 2004 came into force on February 18, 2005.

1969 - Concorde's first flight took place when the 001 prototype took off from Toulouse in France. When the French test pilot landed Concorde for the first time, he simply said 'The big bird flies…'. The British-made prototype 002 flew from Bristol's Filton Airfield in the UK a few weeks later.