1954 – The first day of the public inquiry into the crashes of two Comet airliners within months of each other heard that metal fatigue was the most likely cause. The Comet’s certificate of airworthiness was withdrawn after the second crash. 

1970 – British Petroleum announced the first major discovery of oil under the British sector of the North Sea.

1978 – For the first time in Britain, the International Motor Show was held outside London, its new home being the newly-completed National Exhibition Centre (NEC) near Birmingham.

1987 – Black Monday. Millions of pounds were wiped off the value of shares and other financial markets around the world. Wall Street ended the day down 22%, a greater fall than the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

1989 – The ‘Guildford Four’ had their convictions quashed after wrongly serving 14 years in prison for the IRA bombings at Guildford and Woolwich.

1991 – London’s Royal Opera House had to cancel its performance, as orchestra members, pursuing an industrial dispute, refused to wear dinner jackets and turned up in jeans.

1998 – Cher’s “Believe” was released and became the Billboard 1999 Song of the Year. The album featured some of her most famous singles, such as “Believe” and “Strong Enough.”

2001 – It was announced that a ‘serious error’ was made by researchers who wasted five years testing the wrong animal brains for BSE!

2001 – Dennis Yates (aged 58), a Second World War memorabilia dealer, was jailed for 10 months for handling a wartime Enigma encoding machine. It was stolen from a display cabinet at Bletchley Park (codenamed Station X) on 1st April 2000 during an open day at the former top secret site. A separate charge, of blackmailing Christine Large, the director of Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, where the Abwehr Enigma G312 machine was kept, was ordered to lie on file. Following months of ransom demands, the machine, one of only three left in the world, was returned via BBC Two’s Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman.

2011 – After a 10 year legal battle, police and bailiffs began clearing the illegal part of the UK’s largest travellers’ site, at Dale Farm, Basildon, Essex.

2012 – Trenton Oldfield, aged 36, who disrupted the 2012 University Boat Race by swimming between the boat race crews was jailed for six months for causing a public nuisance. Oldfield said that he was demonstrating against government cuts.

2013 – The violin that was apparently played to calm passengers on the Titanic as it sank was sold for £900,000 in just 10 minutes at auction in Wiltshire. Bidding started at £50 and the violin had a guide price of £300,000. The bandleader Wallace Hartley aged 33, was from Colne in Lancashire and is buried in Colne cemetery. The words ‘Nearer My God To Thee’, the alleged last song that the band played on RMS Titanic, are engraved on the plinth.

2014 – The death (at the age of 66) of the British actress and presenter Lynda Bellingham. The actress was best known for her long-running role as a mother in the 1980’s Oxo TV adverts.