1908 – Henry Farman, born in Paris and the son of an English newspaper correspondent, won the Deutsch-Archdeacon prize for the first heavier than air aircraft flight to cover a circuit of at least 1 Km. On 29th March he became the first to take passenger into the air, and on 30th October, Farman went on to make the first cross-country flight in Europe, flying from Châlons to Rheims (a distance of 27 kilometres in 20 minutes).

1926 – The birth of Michael Bond, English children’s writer and creator of ‘Paddington Bear’. Whilst working as a BBC television cameraman Bond had his first book published, ‘A Bear Called Paddington’. It was the start of Bond’s most famous series of books, telling the tales of a bear from ‘Darkest Peru’, whose Aunt Lucy sent him to England, carrying a jar of marmalade. He also wrote the children’s books about the adventures of a guinea pig named Olga da Polga, as well as the animated BBC TV series The Herbs.

1958 – In Scotland, the serial killer Peter Manuel was arrested after a series of attacks over a two year period that left nine people dead, although he is suspected of having killed as many as eighteen. Manuel was hanged in Barlinnie prison on 11th July 1958. He was one of the last prisoners to die on the Barlinnie gallows.

1964 – Capital Records grudgingly released the first Beatles record, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’, in the US to, as they said ‘see how it goes’. It became their fastest selling single ever. Within only three weeks, a million copies had been sold.

1993 – American, British and French planes bombed a series of targets over southern Iraq. The action was taken in response to repeated Iraqi breaches of the ‘no fly zone’ implemented after the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

1995 – In response to British animal rights protesters, the British Meat and Livestock Commission announced that calves exported from Britain to the Netherlands would be housed in spacious group pens rather than be confined in so called veal crates.

2003 – The Who guitarist Pete Townshend is arrested on suspicion of child porn offences. Police officers impound seven computers from his home in Richmond, Surrey. He is eventually cleared.

2004 – Dr Harold Shipman, who is believed to have killed more than 200 of his patients, was found hung in his prison cell. To date Shipman is the only British doctor to have been proved guilty of murdering his patients, in addition to being one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history.

2017 – The death (aged 86) of the photographer and film maker Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, commonly known as Lord Snowdon. He was married to Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister, from 1960 – 1978.

2020 – A meteorite that landed in Australia in the 1960s revealed stardust up to 7 billion years old. That makes it the oldest known solid material on Earth.