1888 – The English Football League is established.

1912 – The birth of Wilfrid Brambell, Irish film and television actor best known for his role as Albert Steptoe in the television series Steptoe and Son. He also performed alongside The Beatles in their film A Hard Day’s Night, playing Paul McCartney’s fictional grandfather and played Ebenezer Scrooge in a musical version of A Christmas Carol.

1926 – The first directional road markings were introduced onto British roads (Hyde Park Corner, London). They caused confusion and led to seven accidents on the first day.

1942 – The BBC began broadcasting in Morse code to the French Resistance.

1948 – Andrew Lloyd Webber, English composer of musicals, was born. Several of his 13 musicals have run for more than a decade, both in the West End and on Broadway. He was awarded a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government.

1954 – Closed since 1939, the London bullion market, a market for trading gold and silver, reopened.

1963 – John Profumo (Secretary of State for War) denied any impropriety with the model Christine Keeler, or that he was in any way connected to her disappearance when she had been due to appear as a witness in a trial at the Old Bailey. On 5th June 1963 he resigned after admitting that he had lied about his relationship.

1997 – Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth in the skies over the northern hemisphere. The comet’s next pass is predicted for the year 4397.

2000 – D.C. Cook became the first major dealership to sell imported vehicles on the Internet and car buyers were offered price reductions of up to 40%

2002 – A woman, paralysed from the neck down and known to the court as ‘Miss B’, won the legal right to die by having her treatment withdrawn.

2006 – Three Christian Peacemaker Team hostages were freed by British forces in Baghdad after 118 days of captivity and the death of their colleague, American Tom Fox.

2013 – The death, in Ripley, Debyshire of New Zealand born George Lowe, aged 89. He was the last surviving member of the team which first conquered Everest in 1953.

2015 – The coffin of Richard III, the last Plantagenet king, visited locations in Leicestershire associated with his final days, ahead of the reinterment at Leicester Cathedral on 26th March. More than 5,000 white, hand-made roses were placed along the route of Richard III’s cortege to raise awareness of missing people.

2017 – Four members of the public were killed and fifty injured at Westminster in a terrorist incident on Westminster Bridge. The terrorist, who was attempting an assault on the Houses of Parliament.was shot and killed after he drove his car at pedestrians on the bridge and then knifed PC Keith Palmer to death.

2019 – East 17 star Brian Harvey is taken to hospital and arrested after ‘threatening self-harm’ in a livestream video.