1925 – The birth of the comedian Benny Hill, in Southampton, Hampshire. One of his biggest fans was the silent film star, Charlie Chaplin. 

1937 – Marcel Boulestin became the first television cook when he presented the first of the Cook’s Night Out programmes on BBC.

1941 – The British communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, was suppressed in wartime London.

1950 – The British writer George Orwell died after a three year battle against tuberculosis. His books included 1984 and Animal Farm. They were controversial and 1984, like Animal Farm, was widely viewed as an attack on the Communist system.

1966 – The Monte Carlo rally ended in uproar over the disqualification of the British cars expected to fill the first four places. They were all ruled out of the prizes, along with six other British cars, for alleged infringements of regulations about the way their headlights dipped.

1966 – ‘Beatle’, George Harrison, married Patti Boyd who he met in the film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.

1970 – Five RNLI volunteers died in the Fraserburgh lifeboat disaster. It left five women widowed and 15 children mourning the loss of a father. The 1970 disaster marked the third time that a lifeboat from Fraserburgh had been lost. The north east town had previously faced tragedy in 1953 (6 crew died) and 1919 (the death of 2 crew members).

1971 – The current Emley Moor transmitting station, situated in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, began transmitting UHF broadcasts for Yorkshire Television. At 330.4 metres (1,084 ft) tall, it is the tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom and is a Grade II listed building.

1976 – The first Concorde jets carrying commercial passengers simultaneously took off, at 11:40 a.m. from Heathrow Airport and Orly Airport outside Paris. The London flight was to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and the Paris flight was to Rio de Janeiro. Nearly 3 hours was knocked off the normal flying time to Bahrain by the British Concorde but the Air France Concorde arrived 38 minutes late.

1990 – John McEnroe becomes the first player ever to be expelled from the Australian Open tennis event.

1997 – More than 80 people were named as child abusers in statements to a North Wales inquiry into claims of abuse of children in care in Clwyd and Gwynedd over20 years.

2008 – Black Monday on the world’s stock markets saw the FTSE 100 have its biggest ever one-day fall. European stocks closed with their worst result since 11th September 2001, and Asian stocks dropped as much as 14%.

2014 – Pub chain JD Wetherspoon opened a new £1m pub, at junction 2 of the M40 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in spite of fierce criticism from road safety and alcohol campaigners. The Hope and Champion became Britain’s first pub ever to be opened at a motorway service area.