1953 – The royal coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of England took place at Westminster Abbey, London, UK.

1954 – British jockey Lester Piggott, aged 18, became the youngest jockey to win the Derby.

1970 – The collapse of the Cleddau Bridge in Pembrokeshire. Errors in the box girder design caused it to collapse during its construction. A 230 feet (70 m) cantilever being used to put one of the 150-tonne sections into position collapsed on the south side of the estuary. Four workers died and five were injured. The bridge finally became operational in 1975.

1985 – The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) announced an indefinite ban on English football clubs from taking part in any of the European competitions, after continued hooliganism by their fans when travelling abroad.

1988 – The Australian High Court rejected Britain’s bid to ban further publication of the ‘Spycatcher’ memoirs of former British secret agent Peter Wright.

1994 – 25 senior intelligence officers, involved in counter terrorism in Northern Ireland, were killed when their Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland.

1997 – Dr. Stephen Martin & David Mitchell became the first Britons to reach the North Pole without backup.

2010 – Twelve people were killed and 25 injured when gunman Derrick Bird opened fire in west Cumbria, apparently shooting people at random, before shooting himself.

2012 – The start of 4 days of celebrations to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.

2014 – Ninety seven year old Dame Vera Lynn released a new album (Vera Lynn: National Treasure – the Ultimate Collection) to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings on 6th June 1944. Vera Lynn is the first person in music history to celebrate 90 years of showbusiness, the first British performer to top the US official charts, the oldest living artist to have had an official UK No.1 album and the only recording artist in the world to have spanned the pop charts from the 1940s to the 21st century. An unprecedented achievement, which breaks all records in the history of music.

2014 – More than 40,000 tickets were sold over the opening weekend of the new tram route in Edinburgh. The 8.7 mile route cost £776m and involved six years of disruption and problems, including a bitter dispute between the council and its contractor.