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. It was the smallest denomination note until it was replaced with the £1 coin.

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.