1984 – Commercial peat-cutters discovered the preserved body of a man they called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss in Cheshire. It is thought that he was deposited some time between 2 BC and 119 AD.

1989 – Charlotte Hughes from Cleveland celebrates her 112th birthday and enters the record books as the oldest person in Britain.

1992 – Linford Christie, 32, becomes the oldest man to win an Olympic 100m gold medal in Barcelona.

1994 – Thousands of historic documents and more than 100,000 books are destroyed in a blaze at Norwich Central Library.

1999 – Ronan Keating scored his first UK No.1 solo single with the song When You Say Nothing At All.

2001 – Officers from Scotland Yard’s Child Protection Team investigated a boy’s claims that he was held captive in his own home for eight years.

2007 – The worldwide centenary of Scouting took place at Brownsea Island, the largest of the islands in Poole Harbour in the county of Dorset. The first camp in 1907 is regarded as the real origin of the worldwide Scout movement.

2008 – Barry George was found not guilty of the murder of BBC television presenter Jill Dando outside her London home. He was first convicted in 2001 but an Old Bailey retrial was ordered after doubt was cast on the reliability of gunshot residue evidence.

2012 – Eight female badminton doubles players are disqualified from the Olympics in London for attempting to manipulate the draw by throwing matches. On the same day, Great Britain collects its first ever Olympic gold medal in women’s rowing with Heather Stanning and Helen Glover in the coxless pairs.

2015 – The death (aged 72) of the English singer and television presenter Priscilla White, known by her stage name Cilla Black. She gained a part-time job as a cloakroom attendant at Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club and her impromptu performances impressed the Beatles, leading to an audition by the music entrepreneur Brian Epstein.

2016 – The Yorkshire Dales National Park was extended by nearly a quarter (161 square miles were added), covering new areas in Cumbria and into Lancashire.

2016 – The Heysham 2, Unit 8 nuclear power station in Lancashire broke the world record for the longest continuous operation of a nuclear generator without a shutdown. The record breaking run exceeded the previous record of 894 days set by Pickering Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 7 (Lake Ontario, Canada) in 1994.

2017 – The reopening, after a £19 million restoration, of the Piece Hall in Halifax, one of Britain’s most outstanding Georgian buildings. The Piece Hall opened initially on 1st January 1779 as a cloth hall and was the most ambitious and prestigious of its type. It had 315 separate rooms arranged around a central courtyard which were used by handloom weavers to sell the woollen cloth ‘pieces’ they had produced.