1814 – British forces captured Washington DC and set the White House on fire.

1847 – Charlotte Brontë, alias Currer Bell sent her manuscript for Jane Eyre to her London publishers, Smith, Elder & Company.

1875 – Matthew Webb (Captain Webb) started his attempt from Dover England to become the first person to swim the English Channel. He reached Calais, France at 10.40 am the following morning, having been in the water for 22 hours. This memorial to him is erected in Dawley – Telford, close to his birthplace, now demolished)

1903 – Graham Sutherland, designer and artist of the tapestry in Coventry Cathedral was born.

1947 – The first Edinburgh Festival was held.

1967 – Two penguins from Chessington Zoo were taken on a day trip to a local ice-rink to cool off during sweltering London temperatures.

1975 – The first ever nude performance in a British opera took place at Glyndebourne.

1981 – American Mark Chapman was given a 20 year sentence for shooting John Lennon, the former member of the British group, The Beatles – in New York. Chapman has applied for parole every two years since 2000. All the applications have been rejected.

1985 – Five year old John Shorthouse was shot dead in Birmingham after armed officers stormed into his house looking for his father.

1998 – Britain, the United States and the Netherlands agreed to put two Libyans on trial for planting the bomb which blew up a Pan Am airliner over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all those on board and several on the ground.

2014 – The death, aged 90, of Richard Attenborough, who championed the British film business for more than 60 years as an actor, director and prolific movie-maker. He won two Academy Awards for directing and producing Gandhi in 1983.

2019 – Prince Andrew denies knowing his friend Jeffrey Epstein was involved in sexual trafficking of underage girls after public accusations made against him.