1940 – Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister and called Nazism “the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny that has ever darkened and stained the pages of history.”

1984 – John Betjeman, English poet died.

1997 – The newly elected Sinn Fein MPs, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, visited and enjoyed the facilities at the British House of Commons for 24 hours, before the Speaker’s ruling denying them the privileges of MPs in the Palace of Westminster came into effect.

1997 – Health Secretary Frank Dobson announced that the sponsorship of sports events by tobacco firms was to be outlawed. It gave a temporary exemption for Formula One motor-racing, whose owner, Bernie Ecclestone, had earlier donated £1m to the Labour Party.

2004 – Security at the House of Commons came under scrutiny after Fathers For Justice protesters attacked Tony Blair, the prime minister.

2009 – Commons Speaker Michael Martin told MPs he intended to stand down, so becoming the first Commons Speaker to be effectively forced out of office for 300 years. He had faced criticism over his handling of the MPs’ expenses issue.

2013 – At 1:00 p.m. BST the aircraft carrier Ark Royal left Portsmouth Harbour for the final time, to be towed to Turkey for scrap. The Royal Navy’s former flagship had been decommissioned early following the 2010 defence review. A bid to sink Ark Royal and turn her into an artificial diving reef off the Devon coast was rejected as were plans for a commercial heliport in London, a nightclub and school in China and a casino in Hong Kong.

2014 – Britain’s longest-serving postmistress retired, after 61 years in the job. Esther Brauer, 83, ran the business, first from her home in Kylesku in Sutherland, and for the last 31 years from a wooden shed in her garden. She said she had finally made up her mind to stand down because of her computer ‘going doolally’. The 87 year old said that she planned to make the most of her retirement and added ‘I think my husband and I will go away more often.’

2014 – The extradited radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who rose to prominence for his fiery sermons at a north London mosque, was found guilty in New York of supporting terrorism. The jury reached a unanimous guilty verdict on all 11 terror charges.