1945 – The Nazis’ biggest concentration camp at Auschwitz in south-western Poland was liberated. The millions killed during the Holocaust are remembered each year in services across the UK, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day.

1967 – Astronauts Gus Grisson, Edward White and Roger Chaffee die when fire engulfs the Apollo 1 capsule during a test run on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy. On the same day, The Beatles The Beatles sign a new nine-year worldwide contract with EMI.

1969 – Hard line Unionist Ian Paisley was jailed for three months along with Ronald Bunting, for organising an illegal counter-demonstration against a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in Armagh. He was released during a general amnesty for people convicted of political offences.

1981 – Rupert Murdoch’s bid to buy ‘The Times’ and ‘Sunday Times’ was given the go ahead, without the investigation usually required by the Monopolies Commission.

1989 – Thomas Sopwith, British aircraft designer, died aged 101. Remembered for his Sopwith Camel and Sopwith Pup planes he also won a £4,000 prize for the longest flight from England to the Continent in a British built aeroplane, flying 169 miles in 3 hours 40 minutes. His company produced more than 18,000 British World War I aircraft for the allied forces, including 5,747 of the famous Sopwith Camel single-seat fighter. Sopwith was awarded the CBE in 1918.

1993 – Mrs. Thatcher told journalist Woodrow Wyatt that she thought most of the members of the House of Lords were so useless that the Lords needed to be reformed.

1993 – Veronica Bland became the first passive smoking worker in the UK to win compensation for damage to her health at work when she agreed to a settlement of £15,000 from Stockport Council in a personal injury claim.

1995 – Manchester United’s Eric Cantona was fined £20,000 and a football ban over his kung fu-style attack on a fan. Cantona was nicknamed ‘King Eric’ by Manchester United fans, and he was voted the club’s greatest ever player by the Inside United magazine.

2001 – The first Holocaust Memorial Day was held in Britain, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops. The Holocaust resulted in the annihilation of 6 million European Jews and millions of others by the Nazi regime.

2003 – Tony Blair and George Bush held talks at Camp David (the country retreat of the President of the United States), and vowed to hound Saddam Hussein for ‘as long as it takes’ to drive him from power.

2014 – The National Governors’ Association declared that many schools in England were finding it very difficult to recruit senior staff. According to the association, applications for head teacher posts were sometimes littered with basic grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.