1587 After 19 years imprisonment, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for treason at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire. She had been implicated in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

1601 Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, rebelled against Queen Elizabeth I. The revolt was quickly crushed. Essex was found guilty of treason and was beheaded on Tower Green on 25th February 1601, becoming the last person to be beheaded in the Tower of London. It was reported to have taken three strokes by the executioner Thomas Derrick to complete the beheading.

1819 John Ruskin, English writer, artist and art critic, was born. He lived at Brantwood, (Coniston, Cumbria) from 1872 until his death in 1900. See picture of Coniston Water from Brantwood. JMW Turner's watercolour of the view from St. Mary's Church in Kirkby Lonsdale was painted in 1822 and sold in 2012 for £217,250. In 1875, Ruskin described the panorama as ‘one of the loveliest views in England, therefore in the world’. You can view my less famous picture of Ruskin's View here - see picture.

1836 The first London railway train ran from Spa Road to Deptford. There were fears that the 'great speed' of 16 miles an hour would break passengers' necks.

1855 The 'Devil's Footprints' mysteriously appeared in southern Devon when trails of hoof-like marks appeared overnight in the snow. Estimates of the total distance covered by the prints ranged from 40 to 100 miles. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were allegedly travelled straight over, and the footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls, as well as leading up to and exiting various drain pipes with a diameter as small as 4 inches.

1886 A peaceful demonstration by unemployed people started in Trafalgar Square and turned into a riot with looting in Oxford Street and Pall Mall.

1952 Princess Elizabeth formally proclaimed herself Queen and Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith. Lords of the Council, numbering 150, representatives from the Commonwealth and officials from the City of London, including the Lord Mayor and other dignitaries witnessed the accession of the deceased king's eldest daughter.

1965 Health Minister Kenneth Robinson announced that cigarette advertisements were to be banned from British television.

1971 At the Nuremberg International Toy Fair, a British plastics firm making educational toys was shown a board game which had been rejected by established companies. Invented by an Israeli telecommunications expert, Mordecai Meirowitz, the game, renamed ‘Mastermind’ by Invicta Plastics, sold over 55 million sets in some 80 countries, making it the most successful new game of the 70s. Whilst researching for this page we discovered that we had the original game, still unwrapped - see picture.

1972 The Albert Hall management cancelled a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention concert because of the ‘obscene lyrics’ of one of their songs. Fans demonstrated outside the hall.

1973 Mohammed Shafiq became the first non-white P.C. to join the Lancashire Police.

1983 Shergar, the Aga Khan's Derby winner, was kidnapped from a stable in County Kildare, Ireland. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of £2 million, which was never paid. The horse was never seen again.

1998 The death of the controversial politician, Enoch Powell, aged 85. He warned, in 1968, of the perils of high immigration with his 'Rivers of Blood' speech.

2012 The death, aged 74, of John Fairfax, British ocean rower and adventurer who, in 1969, became the first person to row solo (in 180 days) across the Atlantic Ocean. He subsequently went on to become the first to row the Pacific Ocean (with Sylvia Cook) in 1971/2; with a row time of 361 days.

2022 The death (aged 87) of Bamber Gascoigne He was the original quizmaster on University Challenge and held the position for 25 years, from 1962 until the end of the initial run in 1987.

• Contact Form