1924 – British sprinter Eric Liddell refused to run in the heat of the 100m at the Paris Olympics because it fell on a Sunday and was against his religious convictions. He had been tipped as the likely winner. 

1956 – Calder Hall, Britain’s first nuclear power station, began operating.

1970 – England’s soccer captain, Bobby Moore, was cleared of charges of stealing, in a trial in Colombia.

1971 – Prince Charles got his ‘wings’ at RAF College Cranwell, in Lincolnshire.

1971 – The birth of David Walliams (born Williams), the English comedian known for his partnership with Matt Lucas on the TV sketch show Little Britain. He and Lucas wrote and starred in Come Fly with Me, a spoof of the British documentaries Airport and Airline.

1988 – During ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, 8 British Army soldiers were killed and 28 wounded when their bus was hit by a Provisional IRA roadside bomb in County Tyrone. The event is sometimes referred to as the ‘Ballygawley bus bombing’.

1989 – In London, the pleasure cruiser Marchioness was hit by a dredger, the Bowbelle, on the River Thames – 51 people attending a party on the boat were killed. The formal investigation put the time elapsed from the instant of collision at 1.46 a.m. to complete immersion of the Marchioness at a mere 30 seconds.

1990 – Iraq confirmed that Western hostages held after the outbreak of the Gulf War were being moved to military and other vital installations as a human shield to deter attacks.

1992 – The Daily Mirror published compromising photographs of Sarah Ferguson (the Duchess of York), sunbathing topless, on holiday in France with John Bryan, a Texan financial manager. The event contributed to her further estrangement from the Royal Family and after four years of official separation, the Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson announced the mutual decision to divorce, in May 1996.

1992 – Iraq sentenced a British man (Paul Ride, a catering manager from east London) to seven years in jail for alleged illegal entry into the country.

2004 – Stoke-on-Trent man Rob Tinsley names Bryan Adams as the ‘other man’ in his divorce papers after years of trying to cope with his wife’s obsession with the singer.

2019 – NASA announced they would send a ship to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, to look for extraterrestrial life. The craft, named Europa Clipper, should be ready by 2023 and launch by 2025.

2020 – Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon is arrested and charged with fraud over a fundraising campaign to build a wall on the Mexican border.

2020 – Hashem Abedi, aged 23 and the brother of the Manchester Arena bomber, was jailed for at least 55 years for the murders of 22 people. He was convicted after a court heard that he was just as guilty as his brother, Salman Abedi, who had detonated the bomb and blew himself up at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on 22nd May 2017. Abedi refused to leave his cell at the Old Bailey for the sentencing. The judge said that it would be 55 years before Abedi could even be considered for parole and that he “may never be released”. The trial was the largest murder case in English legal history.