1570 James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, and regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, was fatally shot by James Hamilton, a supporter of Mary Queen of Scots. It was the first recorded assassination by a firearm.

1571Queen Elizabeth I opened the Royal Exchange, London, as a bankers’ meeting house. It was founded by the financier Sir Thomas Gresham .

1643Sir Thomas Fairfax took Leeds for the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War.

1713The signing of the Treaty of Utrecht redrew the map of Europe. The treaty signalled the end of the long and bloody War of Spanish Succession. As part of the agreement Gibraltar and Minorca become British.

1806Death of William Pitt ‘The Younger’ at the age of 46. He was Britain's youngest Prime Minister (aged 24) and served twice, from 19th December 1783 to 14th March 1801 and again from 10th May 1804 until his death 'on this day'.

1849English-born Elizabeth Blackwell, who was constantly ostracized and harassed by the male students, graduated from a New York medical school to become the first woman doctor.

1875The death of Charles Kingsley, the English clergyman who wrote The Water Babies.

1900Second Boer War: The defeat of the British at the Battle of Spion Kop, 24 miles west-south-west of Ladysmith on a steep terraced hilltop. Many football grounds in the English Premier League and Football League, have one terrace or stand 'Spion Kop' or 'Kop' because of the steep nature of their terracing.

1901 Marconi carried out his first radio transmission experiments, receiving a Morse code signal across the water from St. Catherine’s on the Isle of Wight to the Lizard in Cornwall. Lizard Point (see picture) is the most southerly point of the British mainland.

1943The British captured Tripoli. The Germans retreated, and the Eighth Army crossed into Tunisia in pursuit.

1955Fourteen people died and dozens were injured when an express train travelling from York to Bristol derailed at Sutton Coldfield station.

1963At 7.30 pm in Beirut, the American Eleanor Philby was waiting for her husband Kim, a Middle East correspondent for two London journals, to collect her. Instead, he was on his way to Moscow - ‘the most damaging double agent in British history’.

1985PC George Hammond was viciously stabbed while on the beat in London, and it took more than 120 pints of blood to save his life. He had continual nightmares and never recovered from the injuries suffered in the attack. His right kidney was removed and his left kidney never functioned properly again. This had led to chronic heart problems, culminating in a heart attack and kidney failure shortly before his death in Kings College Hospital on 13th December 1995.

1985A House of Lords debate was televised for the first time.

1989Legislation came into force which permitted garages to display fuel prices by litre only, not by the gallon.

2015 The owner of the mobile network 'Three' confirmed that it was in exclusive negotiations to acquire O2 UK from Spanish telco Telefonica for £10.25bn. It would have made the combined Three and O2 operator the biggest in the UK, with a 41% share of the market but the deal was blocked in May 2016 by the European Commission.

2025 18 year old Axel Rudakubana was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in jail, after pleading guilty to the murder of 3 young girls (aged 6, 7 and 9) and the attempted murder of 10 other people at a dance class in Southport on 29th July 2024. It was the longest prison sentence ever handed out to a teenager. Within minutes of Rudakubana being jailed, the case was referred under the "unduly lenient sentence scheme" to consider whether the 52 year minimum term was too short.

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