1953 – The birth of Lucinda Green MBE, former champion British equestrian. She began riding at the age of four and is most well known for winning the Badminton Horse Trials a record six times, on six different horses.

1956 – An official ceasefire during the Suez Crisis following the British and French invasion of Egypt after President Nasser had announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal.

1964 – The country’s first drink-driving advertisement was shown on television, with the message “Drinking and driving are dangerous.”

1967 – British heavyweight champion Henry Cooper beat challenger Billy Walker to become the only boxer to win three Lonsdale Belts outright.

1974 – Sandra Rivett, the English nanny to John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, is allegedly bludgeoned to death by Lord Lucan, who disappears, never to be conclusively seen again.

1978 – The birth, in Peckham, London of the footballer Rio Gavin Ferdinand. He joined Manchester United in July 2002 for around £30 million, breaking the transfer fee record.

1990 – Mary Robinson became the first woman President of the Irish Republic.

1996 – A team of British, American and Australian scientists reported evidence that life on Earth originated some 350 million years earlier than previously believed.

1996 – The closure of ‘Butlins – Barry Island’ in south Wales, Billy Butlin’s last-built and smallest holiday camp. At the time of its closure it was owned by Majestic Holidays and was sold for £2.25m to Vale of Glamorgan Council who demolished the camp and sold it to Bovis Homes for housing development.

1997 – Despite him being instrumental in their overnight phenomenal international success, British group ‘The Spice Girls’ sacked their creator and manager Simon Fuller.

1998 – Families of World War 1 soldiers executed for cowardice or desertion laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in the first ceremony of its kind to pay tribute to the 306 servicemen who died.

2001 – Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted that his global activity for the war on terrorism did not mean that domestic issues such as crime, health and education were neglected.

2012 – Actor Clive Dunn, best known for his role as Lance Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army, died aged 92.

2013 – A report showed that the NHS spent nearly £700 on clinical negligence cover for every live birth in England – almost a fifth of all spending on maternity.

2014 – Alan Knight, a fraudster from Swansea, who pretended to be quadriplegic for two years in an attempt to evade punishment for conning an elderly and vulnerable neighbour was jailed for four and a half years.

2016 – The death (aged 95) of the veteran broadcaster Sir Jimmy Young. He spent almost three decades at BBC Radio 2 and was one of the original Radio 1 DJs when the station launched in 1967.