1791 – The British Parliament passed the Constitutional Act of 1791 and split the old Province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada. 

1855 – The death of the writer Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the romantic poet William Wordsworth.

1858 – Mendelssohn’s Wedding March was first played at the wedding of Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Victoria and Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia.

1874 – The birth of William Somerset Maugham, English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s.

1899 – The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company began manufacture of the first radio sets, at Chelmsford.

1911 – The Daily Herald was launched. It was the first newspaper to sell two million copies.

1919 – The founding of The League of Nations, forerunner of the United Nations. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.

1972 – The world’s first kidney and pancreatic tissue transplant was carried out in London

1981 – ‘The Gang of Four’ (Roy Jenkins, Dr David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers) split from the British Labour party to form the Social Democrats.

1989 – Actor John Cleese won damages for libel at the High Court over an article in the Daily Mirror, which claimed he had become like Basil Fawlty in his comedy series Fawlty Towers.

1990 – The so called Burns’ Day Storm occurred on this day over north-western Europe, and was one of the strongest storms on record. It started on the birthday of poet Robert Burns, lasted for two days, caused widespread damage and was responsible for 97 deaths.

1995 – After being sent off in a Premier League match at Crystal Palace, Manchester United’s Eric Cantona launches a kung-fu attack on Palace fan Matthew Simmonds. He receives an eight-month ban from football.

1998 – Spice Girl Victoria Adams and footballer David Beckham announce their engagement. On the same day, The Queen Mother, 97, has hip replacement surgery.

2003 – During the Iraq invasion, a group of people left London for Baghdad, to serve as human shields and thus prevent the U.S. led coalition troops from bombing certain locations.

2013 – Thorpe Park ordered experts to redesign its £20m new rollercoaster ‘The Swarm’, due to open on 15th March, after dummies lost limbs during dry run tests.

2014 – Sixteen schoolgirls made history by ending a tradition of male-only choral singing at Canterbury Cathedral stretching back more than a thousand years. The girls’ choir had their first public performance ‘On This Day’, at evensong. “The girls will initially only be singing at services when boy choristers, boarders at St Edmund’s school, take their twice-termly breaks. There are no women in the cathedral’s adult choir.”