1999 - The Euro currency was introduced and adopted by 11 Member States - Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

2017 - More than 1,300 cars were destroyed when the multi-storey car park at the Liverpool Echo Arena burst into flames during the final event of the Liverpool International Horse Show.

1999 - George Harrison is stabbed in the chest when an intruder breaks into his home in Henley-on-Thames. Wife Olivia fights the attacker off by hitting him over the head with a lamp.

1940 - London suffered its most devastating air raid when Germans firebombed the city. Hundreds of fires caused by the exploding bombs engulfed areas of London, but fire fighters showed a valiant indifference to the bombs falling around them and saved much of the city from destruction.

1915 - The British Cabinet decides to institute compulsory military service, with single men to be conscripted before married ones.

1977 - Thousands of people flocked to UK cinemas to watch the long-awaited blockbuster, Star Wars. Sadly, Carrie Fisher also died on this day in 2016 of a sudden cardiac arrest.

2004 - A devastating tsunami with waves up to 30 m (100 ft) high and an earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean. The earthquake was a 9.3 magnitude which caused a tsunami that hit Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives and other countries. The destruction killed an estimated 227,898 people.

2021 - The James Webb Space Telescope was launched from the Guiana Space Center. Jointly developed by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, the telescope is the most advanced infrared telescope ever built.

1914 - Late on Christmas Eve, men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) heard German troops in the trenches opposite them singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches.