1875 – The death of Charles Kingsley, the English clergyman who wrote The Water Babies.

1900 – Second Boer War: The defeat of the British at the Battle of Spion Kop, 24 miles west-south-west of Ladysmith on a steep terraced hilltop. Many football grounds in the English Premier League and Football League, have one terrace or stand ‘Spion Kop’ or ‘Kop’ because of the steep nature of their terracing.

1901 – Marconi carried out his first radio transmission experiments, receiving a Morse code signal across the water from St. Catherine’s on the Isle of Wight to the Lizard in Cornwall.

1943 – The British captured Tripoli. The Germans retreated, and the Eighth Army crossed into Tunisia in pursuit.

1955 – Fourteen people died and dozens were injured when an express train travelling from York to Bristol derailed at Sutton Coldfield station.

1963 – At 7.30 pm in Beirut, the American Eleanor Philby was waiting for her husband Kim, a Middle East correspondent for two London journals, to collect her. Instead, he was on his way to Moscow – ‘the most damaging double agent in British history’.

1985 – PC George Hammond was viciously stabbed while on the beat in London, and it took more than 120 pints of blood to save his life. He had continual nightmares and never recovered from the injuries suffered in the attack. His right kidney was removed and his left kidney never functioned properly again. This had led to chronic heart problems, culminating in a heart attack and kidney failure shortly before his death in Kings College Hospital on 13th December 1995.

1985 – A House of Lords debate was televised for the first time.

1986 – Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, Ray Charles, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers and Elvis Presley are the first inductees to the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame.

1989 – Legislation came into force which permitted garages to display fuel prices by litre only, not by the gallon.

2005 – Happy Mondays dancer Bez, wins the £50,000 Celebrity Big Brother prize after receiving 54% of the final viewer vote.

2013 – Chelsea’s Eden Hazard is sent off in the Capital One Cup semi final against Swansea for kicking a ballboy. On the same day, the US armed forces overturn a 1994 ban on women serving in combat.

2015 – The owner of the mobile network ‘Three’ confirmed that it was in exclusive negotiations to acquire O2 UK from Spanish telco Telefonica for £10.25bn. It would have made the combined Three and O2 operator the biggest in the UK, with a 41% share of the market but the deal was blocked in May 2016 by the European Commission.

2018 – Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond retires after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. On the same day, 12 camels are disqualified from the King Abdulaziz Camel beauty contest in Saudi Arabia after their owners used botox on their lips.