1928 – The voting age for women in Britain was reduced from 30 to 21.

1940 – The ‘Norway Debate’ began in the House of Commons. It led to the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the formation of a widely-based National Government led by Winston Churchill which was to govern Britain until the end of World War II.

1945 – Germany signed an unconditional surrender in a small school in Rheims (France) when General Jodl, German Army Chief of Staff, signed his name on documents that formally ended six years of war in Europe.

1947 – The death of Harry Gordon Selfridge, Sr., the American retail magnate who founded the London-based department store Selfridges.

1956 – Health Minister, RH Turton, rejected calls for a government campaign against smoking, saying no ill effects had been proven.

1959 – British Rail announced plans to close down 230 stations.

1965 – White voters in the African colony of Rhodesia backed Prime Minister Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front which was demanding independence from the UK.

1987 – Ex-Guinness chairman Geoffrey Saunders was remanded on bail on a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

1994 – Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” was found at a hotel, just three months after it had been stolen from a museum.

1997 – Glasgow Rangers won their 9th successive Scottish League title – to equal the record held by their closest rivals, Celtic.

2002 – The Queen officially opened the Gateshead Millennium Bridge that spans the River Tyne between Gateshead’s Quays arts quarter on the south bank, and the Quayside of Newcastle upon Tyne on the north bank. The tilting bridge (the world’s first) is sometimes referred to as the ‘Blinking Eye Bridge’ due to its shape and its tilting method to let tall ships pass underneath.

2014 – An international league table (Better Life Index) showed that people in Britain were 24 per cent more likely to go out of their way to help a stranger than the average inhabitant of the world’s other leading industrial countries.

2018 – Vladimir Putin is sworn in as Russian President for another six years. On the same day, Mark Williams defeats John Higgins 18-16 to win the World Snooker Championship at The Crucible in Sheffield and, as promised, does his press conference in the nude.