1904 – The steam locomotive City of Truro (engine number 3440), designed by George Jackson Churchward and built at the GWR Swindon Works, became the first steam engine in Europe to exceed 100 mph.

1930 – Britain appointed John Masefield as Poet Laureate.

1934 – Alan Bennett, English actor and playwright born, in Leeds.

1936 – Albert Finney, British actor (Murder on the Orient Express, Tom Jones) was born, in Pendleton, Salford.

1939 – British prime minister Winston Churchill urged military alliance with USSR.

1941 – World War II: The German submarine U-110 was captured by the Royal Navy. On board was the latest Enigma cryptography machine which Allied cryptographers later used to break coded German messages.

1945 – World War II: The Channel Islands were liberated by the British after five years of German occupation.

1958 – The noir psychological thriller film “Vertigo,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock, was released.

1960 – Start of the sexual revolution of the 1960s when the birth control pill went on the market.

1995 – Wayne Mills became the first soldier to win Britain’s new gallantry award for courage (the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross) when he put his life in danger by protecting his comrades in Bosnia as they withdrew from a Serb attack.

1996 – The British House of Commons voted to maintain the Ministry of Defence ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces.

1998 – Dana International wins the Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing “Diva” in Birmingham.

1999 – Father Ted wins best comedy at the BAFTA TV awards.

2013 – Everton Manager David Moyes is announced as Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor at Manchester United.

2014 – Former cabinet minister Chris Huhne was ordered to pay £77,750 for the costs of his prosecution for passing speeding points to his then wife, the economist Vicky Pryce. Both Huhne and Pryce were sentenced to eight months imprisonment in March 2013.