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.

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.