1628 John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, was born.

1660 At Gresham College in Central London, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray founded what was later known as the Royal Society, an organization dedicated to promoting excellence in science.

1757 The birth of the poet William Blake. His work included a poem that began 'And did those feet in ancient time', which became the words for the anthem Jerusalem.

1814 The Times newspaper was, for the first time, printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer. It signalled the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.

1905 The Irish political party Sinn Fein was founded by Arthur Griffith in Dublin.

1919 Nancy Astor became Britain's first woman MP, holding a safe Plymouth seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election caused by her husband's elevation to the peerage.

1935 The Miles quadruplets (Ann, Ernest, Michael and Paul) were born in Cambridgeshire and were the first British quads to survive infancy.

1967 All horse racing in Britain was suspended 'indefinitely' to help prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.

1968 The death of the children's author Enid Blyton. She wrote more than 800 books over 40 years including Noddy (see picture), The Famous Five and The Secret Seven.

1971 An English farmer uncovered a major immigrant smuggling operation when he rammed a plane which had landed at a disused airfield on his farm in Kimbolton, 10 miles from Huntingdon. The pilot escaped but police officers arrived soon after the incident and detained the five occupants of the plane.

1990 Margaret Thatcher made her last speech outside 10 Downing Street following her resignation as Prime Minister.

1993 The Northern Ireland peace process and Prime Minister John Major's credibility were dealt a blow when secret government contacts with the IRA were publicly disclosed.

1997 MPs in the House of Commons approved a Private Member's Bill, introduced by Labour MP Michael Foster, to ban fox hunting.

1999 Eleven people were injured when a nude swordsman attacked churchgoers at St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church in London.

2006 A modern spy drama unfolded following the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London when traces of polonium-210 radiation were found at central London addresses.

2011 British company Captive Media announced details of its urinal mounted, urine-controlled games console for men. It called it the first 'hands-free' video gaming console of its kind, with games on offer including a skiing challenge, and a multiple choice pub quiz. A noted side effect was that the toilets became markedly cleaner, as a new premium was set on accuracy.

2013 A Newport man (James Howells) searched a landfill site in South Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away, worth over £4m. The drive contained 7,500 bitcoins, a virtual form of currency for use online. The drive was not found.

2013 The grand unveiling of TV's Coronation Street (Weatherfield) at its new home on Salford Quays, (see picture), across the water from the BBC. In January 2014 the soap left its long established Quay Street site (see picture) in Manchester city centre, which was sold for £26.5m.

2014 Jordan Winn was jailed for 13 months after he was caught driving at nearly 100mph in a 30mph zone. Winn blamed his Staffordshire bull terrier, who he said was in the footwell of his Volvo S60, for sitting on the accelerator pedal.

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