1866 – H G Wells, English writer, was born. His books included The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds.

1874 – The birth, at 4 Clarence Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire of the composer Gustav Holst, most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets.

1915 – Stonehenge was sold at auction to Mr C H Chubb for £6,600 as a present for his wife. Mr Chubb presented it to the nation three years later as his wife didn’t think it suited her.

1949 – The Republic of Ireland beat England 2-0 at Goodison Park – England’s first home defeat by a foreign football team.

1955 – The Admiralty announced that Britain had formally claimed uninhabited Rockall, a rocky islet 300 miles west of Scotland, to stop the Soviets spying on missile tests.

1962 – Bamber Gascoigne’s University Challenge was screened for the first time.

1964 – Malta became independent from Britain. The island became a republic in 1974, but retained membership of the Commonwealth.

1965 – BP found oil in the North Sea.

1972 – The birth of Liam Gallagher (born William John Paul Gallagher) musician and singer-songwriter. He was formerly the frontman of the rock band Oasis until the band split up in 2009 and he formed Beady Eye.

1979 – An RAF Harrier plane crashed onto houses in a Cambridgeshire town, killing two men and a young boy.

1984 – Police and miners clashed at a pit in Maltby, South Yorkshire, in one of the biggest pickets since the miners’ strike began.

1985 – Madonna scored her first UK No.1 album with Like A Virgin, ten months after its release.

1986 – Prince Charles admitted that he talked to his plants.

2012 – 50 year old Jessica Harper, a former Lloyds Bank worker in charge of online security was jailed for five years for fraud. She submitted 93 false and doctored invoices to pay herself £2,463,750, giving large sums to friends and her three brothers to invest in property.