2000 - Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde passenger jet on an international charter flight from Paris to New York, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground.

2013 - It was announced that the Pride and Prejudice author Jane Austen would feature on the next £10 note avoiding a long-term absence of women represented on banknotes.

1997 - For the first time in 127 years hen harriers were raised in Derbyshire, 1500 feet above the Goyt Valley near Buxton.

2007 – Torrential rain swept across large parts of the UK. Hull was under water, but the flooding spread around the UK with Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire being some of the counties worst affected.

1982 – The flagship of the British task force to the Falklands, HMS Hermes, arrived back in Portsmouth. Thousands crowded the dockside to see the 1,700 on board disembark 108 days after she had left for her historic mission.

1982 - An IRA terrorist bomb in Hyde Park, London, killed 3 members of the Blues and Royals during the Changing of the Guard ceremony. Two hours later 8 bandsmen were killed by an IRA bomb planted at the bandstand in Regent’s Park.

1941 - Winston Churchill introduced his ‘V for Victory” campaign which rapidly spread through Europe. The BBC took the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which matched the dot-dot-dot-dash Morse code for the letter V, and played it before news bulletins.

1970 – Radio 1 DJ Kenny Everett was sacked after he joked on air that the wife of the conservative transport minister Mary Peyton had ‘crammed a fiver into the examiner’s hand’, when taking her driving test.

1981 - The Humber Estuary Bridge was officially opened by the Queen. For 16 years after its construction it was the world’s longest single-span structure.