1942 – Des Lynam (83), Irish-born British television broadcaster (Grandstand, Match of the Day, Wimbledon, the Grand National), born in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland.
1960 – Damon Hill (65), English former racing driver who competed in Formula One from 1992 to 1999 (winner of 22 Grand Prix across eight seasons), born in Hampstead, London.
1968 – Anastacia (57), American singer, songwriter and former dancer (“I’m Outta Love”, “Paid My Dues”), born in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
1969 – Ken Doherty (56), Irish professional snooker player, commentator and radio presenter nicknameds The Darlin’ of Dublin, born in Ranelagh, Dublin, Ireland.
1990 – Pixie Geldof (35), English model and singer (“Woman Go Wild”) and the third daughter of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates, born in London.
2000 – Paula Yates (b. 1959), British television presenter and writer (The Big Breakfast, The Tube).
1944 – Blackout regulations eased in Britain to allow lights on buses, trains and at railway stations for the first time since the beginning of World War II in 1939.
1998 – There was chaos in Staffordshire, when animal rights activists release around 6,000 animals from a mink farm. Mink are now devastating British wildlife, so it was not a particularly wise or humanitarian move!
2001 – The opening of 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 bridge is sometimes referred to as the ‘Blinking Eye Bridge’ due to its shape and its tilting method to let tall ships pass underneath.
2007 – Worried savers continued to flock to some Northern Rock bank branches to withdraw their savings when the bank applied to the Bank of England for emergency funds. Chancellor Alistair Darling appealed for calm, nevertheless £2bn was withdrawn from Northern Rock accounts in just 3 days.
2013 – A wedding service at Holy Cross Church in Sherston, Wiltshire, was delayed for an hour when an owl that was bearing the wedding rings fell asleep in the church roof.
2014 – A businessman gambled £900,000, the biggest amount of money ever staked on a political event, on Scotland staying in the United Kingdom. He called it an ‘investment’ rather than a gamble, with a profit of £193,333.33 in the event of a ‘No’ vote, and it was!
1978 – The video for Queen’s single ‘Bicycle Race’ was filmed at Wimbledon Stadium, Wimbledon, UK. It featured 65 naked female professional models racing around the stadium’s track on bicycles, which had been hired for the day. The rental company was reported to have requested payment for all the saddles when they found out how their bikes had been used.
1969 – Media on both sides of the Atlantic were running stories that said Paul McCartney was dead. He was supposedly killed in a car accident in Scotland on November 9th, 1966 and that a double had been taking his place for public appearances. In fact, Paul and his girlfriend Jane Asher were on vacation in Kenya at the time.
1983 – Paul Young scored his first UK No.1 album with his debut release ‘No Parlez.’ The album returned to the top of the charts on four other occasion’s spending a total of 119 weeks on the chart.
1996 – A bomb was found at a South London sorting office addressed to Icelandic singer Bjork. Police in Miami had alerted the post office after finding the body of Ricardo Lopez who had made a video of himself making the bomb and then killing himself.
1999 – English singer Frankie Vaughan died of heart failure aged 71. During the 1950s he scored twenty UK Top 30 singles including the UK No.2 ‘Green Door.’ He was awarded an OBE in 1965, and a CBE in 1996
2000 – Paula Yates was found dead in bed from a suspected drug overdose. Yates had presented the UK music TV show The Tube during the 80s, married Bob Geldof and was the girlfriend of INXS singer Michael Hutchence.
2011 – Adele went to No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Someone Like You’. The track was also No.1 in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Finland, France, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom.
1683 – Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek declared his discovery of microorganisms to the Royal Society in London. Although Leeuwenhoek never made an official publication of his findings, he was the first to discover microorganisms and bacteria’s existence.
1701 – King James II of England died whilst in exile in France.
1745 – Prince Charles Edward Stewart or ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ as he was better known, arrived in Edinburgh and declared his father to be the rightful King of Scotland. He could not capture Edinburgh Castle so he set up his Court in Holyrood Palace.
1789 – German-British astronomer William Herschel discovered the moon of Saturn, “Mimas.”
1827 – ‘Wides’ in cricket were first scored in the Sussex v Kent game at Brighton.