1916 – The birth, in Huddersfield, of Harold Wilson, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, British Labour Prime Minister from 1964-70, and again from 1974-1976 until he resigned, aged 60.

1932 – Birth of Nigel Lawson, former editor of the Spectator turned politician. He was Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983-1989.

1945 – The huge Krupps munitions factory in Germany was destroyed when 1,000 Allied bombers took part in the biggest ever daylight raid.

1955 – The death, aged 73, of Sir Alexander Fleming, the British Nobel Prize winning bacteriologist who discovered penicillin.

1974 – Two self-proclaimed British Government, anti IRA spies, escaped from a top-security prison in Ireland where they were serving sentences for armed robbery.

1988 – The Bank of England pound note, first introduced on 12th March 1797, ceased to be legal tender in Britain at midnight. When the deadline for returning old notes was reached, it was estimated that some 70 million were still outstanding.

1997 – Ann Widdecombe became the first Prisons’ Minister to visit all the 129 jails in Britain.

2013 – Former cabinet minister Chris Huhne and his former wife Vicky Pryce were both jailed for eight months for perverting the course of justice. The pair, sentenced at Southwark Crown Court, were convicted after she took driving licence points for him after he was caught speeding in 2003.

2014 – The death of the Rail Maritime and Transport union leader Bob Crow, at the age of 52. He led the RMT from 2002 and became one of Britain’s most high-profile union leaders.

2014 – Dozens of firefighters were called out to deal with a blaze at a fire station. The retained fire crew at Downham Market in Norfolk could do nothing, because their own fire engine was caught up in the blaze that started in their own building.

2018 – The death (aged 90) of the comedian Ken Dodd, just days after leaving hospital following a long term chest infection. He passed away in his home at Knotty Ash, Liverpool, the home that he was born in and had lived in for his entire life. Two days earlier he had married his long term partner of 40 years, Anne Jones. Ken Dodd made his professional debut on 27th September, 1954. His lengthy stage shows were legendary (one lasted for five and a quarter hours). In 1974 Ken Dodd earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the world’s longest ever joke-telling session, when he told more than 1,500 jokes in three hours and six minutes on stage at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre.