1817 – The death of William Bligh, rear-Admiral who was captain of the HMS Bounty at the time of the mutiny. 

1889 – The first performance at the Savoy, London, of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘The Gondoliers’, their last real success. It ran for a very successful 554 performances, closing on 30th June 1891.

1940 – The birth, in Liverpool, of the comedian Stan Boardman who broke into television via Opportunity Knocks and The Comedians.

1941 – Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Imperial Japanese Navy used 353 planes to attack the US fleet at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor Naval Base. The attack killed 2,403 people.

1955 – Clement Atlee resigned as leader of the opposition Labour Party, following months of speculation. Hours later he was made an Earl by the Queen; the first Labour leader to accept a hereditary peerage. Mr Attlee led his party for 20 years and had a seat in the House of Commons for 33 years. In 1942 he became deputy prime minister in the war cabinet under Sir Winston Churchill. During his six years as prime minister from 1945 to 1951 he oversaw sweeping changes to the welfare state, with the introduction of the National Health Service and the nationalisation of many key industries – the Bank of England, civil aviation, coal, telecommunications, transport, electricity, iron and steel.

1972 – Apollo 17 launched the final manned lunar landing mission, during which the crew took the famous “blue marble” photo of the entire Earth.

1979 – Cabinet minister Lord Soames was named transitional governor of Rhodesia to oversee its progress into legal independence. In 1964, the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia Ian Smith had rejected British conditions for independence. Rhodesia became a British colony in 1923, and was dogged by violence and international alienation during its struggle for independence.

1979 – Production of MG Midget sports cars came to an end. 73,899 of the last version were produced and the last 500 cars were painted black.

1983 – A cat climbed to a height of 160ft up an industrial chimney, holding up the work of Lancashire’s chief steeplejack and chimney demolisher Fred Dibnah.

1993 – Protesters lost a 20 year fight to save a 250 year old chestnut tree in east London. Twenty protesters were arrested after they clashed with 200 police officers sent to ensure a court order to cut down the tree was enforced and that the planned motorway extension could go ahead.

2001 – The Taliban regime gave up its stronghold in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The fall of Kandahar came after the Afghan capital Kabul had been retaken in November. An ebullient Tony Blair, Prime MInister at the time, said – ‘That regime is effectively now disintegrated. The terror camps can be shut down, and I think that is a fantastic thing.’

2012 – Jacintha Saldhana, a nurse at King Edward VII hospital – London, who took a hoax call about the Duchess of Cambridge from two Australian radio presenters posing as the Queen, was found dead at her home after committing suicide.

2014 – The Archbishop of Canterbury claims that he is more shocked by the plight of Britain’s hunger-stricken poor than suffering in African refugee camps.

2020 – Coca-Cola was named the world’s largest plastic polluter by the charity “Break Free From Plastic.”