1910 – The birth of David Niven, the Scottish-born film actor whose films included The Pink Panther and The Guns of Navarone. 

1940 – English actress Vivien Leigh won an Oscar for her performance as Scarlett O’Hara in the film Gone with the Wind.

1946 – The British Government took control of the Bank of England, after 252 years.

1947 – The International Monetary Fund began financial operations. Its goal was to stabilize exchange rates and to assist the reconstruction of the world’s international payment system.

1950 – Klaus Fuchs, one of Britain’s top atomic scientists, was sentenced to 14 years for spying in the Soviet Union.

1954 – The biggest explosion ever made by man is witnessed in the Pacific when US scientists explode their second H-bomb at Bikini Atoll.

1959 – The birth of Nicholas (Nick) Griffin, British politician. He was chairman of the British National Party (BNP) and Member of the European Parliament for North West England until 2014.

1966 – James Callaghan, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confirmed that Britain would change over to decimal currency in 1971.

1968 – Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” is first performed as a 15-minute pop cantata at Colet Court School in London.

1971 – Hundreds of thousands of workers across Britain took part in an unofficial day of protest against the government’s new Industrial Relations Bill.

1978 – Charlie Chaplin’s coffin was stolen from a Swiss cemetery.

1981 – Bobby Sands, IRA member, began his 65-day hunger strike in Maze Prison, County Down.

1994 – Fred West was charged with two further murders following more human remains found at his home. He had previously admitted murdering his 16 old daughter Heather.

2014 – Newcastle manager Alan Pardew headbutts Hull midfielder David Meyler during a touchline spat. He is fined £100,000 by his club, another £60,000 by the FA and banned from the touchline for seven games.

2016 – The death of Tony Warren (aged 79) , creator of Coronation Street, the world’s longest-running TV ‘soap opera’ in production.

2020 – The meteorological office announced that February had been the wettest in over 150 years. On a fourth consecutive weekend of terrible weather, Storm Jorge prompted weather warnings stretching from Cornwall to the north of Scotland and across to Northern Ireland.