1802 – Edwin Henry Landseer, English painter, well known for his paintings of animals, particularly horses, dogs and stags, was born. The best known of Landseer’s works, however, are the sculptures of the lions in Trafalgar Square. 

1804 – John Wedgwood, son of the pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood founded the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society.

1876 – The Scottish-born inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, patented the telephone. Bell’s father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf; factors that profoundly influenced Bell’s life’s work. Ironically, Bell considered the telephone an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and he refused to have a telephone in his study.

1900 – A fire at Buckingham Palace destroyed part of its roof.

1926 – The first transatlantic telephone call was made, from London to New York.

1930 – The birth of Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon) British aristocrat and former husband of Princess Margaret.

1935 – Malcolm Campbell set a land speed record of 276.8 mph in Florida.

1946 – Doctors mounted a campaign to oppose the introduction of a National Health Service.

1968 – The first news programme in colour was broadcast on BBC2.

1969 – The Queen officially opened the Victoria Line of the London Underground, and following the ceremony she took the new line from Oxford Circus to Victoria.

1975 – The body of Lesley Whittle, a 17-year-old heiress who had been kidnapped from her Shropshire home 52 days earlier, was found at the bottom of a drain shaft. She had been held for 52 days then strangled by Donald Nielson, known as The Black Panther.

1988 – The IRA confirmed that the three people shot dead by security forces in Gibraltar the previous day were members of an active service unit.

1990 – The Egyptian Fayed brothers were allowed to keep Harrods despite an official report that branded them liars during their £615m takeover bid of the House of Fraser Stores.

2014 – Birmingham city council began investigating an alleged plot to oust headteachers in the city’s schools, replacing them with people who would run their schools on ‘strict Islamic principles’. The plan, dubbed ‘Operation Trojan Horse’ claimed that up to four schools in the city had already been taken over.

2015 – The one millionth Morris Minor to be produced was sold at auction by Surrey-based specialist car auctioneers ‘Historics at Brooklands’ for £25,760; 55 years after it rolled off the production line. The classic British car had 23,364 miles ‘on the clock’ and was still registered on the original number plate 1 MHU, meaning one million in engineering terms.