1053 The death of Godwin of Wessex, one of the most powerful earls in England under the Danish king Cnut the Great and his successors. Godwin was the father of King Harold Godwinson and Edith of Wessex, wife of King Edward the Confessor.

1755Dr Samuel Johnson's dictionary 'A Dictionary of the English Language' was first published, in London. It contained explanations and meanings for 40,000 different words and had taken him almost 9 years to compile, although he had claimed he could finish it in three. He was paid the sum of 1,500 guineas, equivalent to about £230,000 in today's money.

1793The Bank of England issued the first £5 notes.

1802William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy saw a 'long belt' of daffodils, inspiring him to pen 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'.

1901The birth of Joe Davis, world snooker and billiards champion from 1927-1946.

1901The first motor hearse appeared on the streets of Britain when it carried the body of William Drakeford to his burial in Coventry. His employer, the Daimler Motor Company, had adapted one of their cars for the occasion.

1912The British built Titanic luxury ocean liner that had collided earlier with an iceberg about 400 miles from Newfoundland sank at 2:20 a.m. More than 1,500 people drowned or froze to death in the icy waters. Most of the 700 survivors were women and children. As the ship sank, the band played music to calm the passengers and all the musicians went down with the ship. They were recognized for their heroism and bandleader Wallace Hartley aged 33, from Colne in Lancashire, is commemorated in a memorial in the town's centre. (see picture). His grave (see picture) is in Colne cemetery. The words 'Nearer My God To Thee', the alleged last song that the band played on RMS Titanic, are engraved on the plinth (see picture) along with a violin and bow.

1925Author James Barrie donated his copyright fee for the story of Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London.

1941The Belfast Blitz, during which two-hundred bombers of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) attacked Belfast in Northern Ireland, killing one thousand people.

1942The people of the British colony of Malta were awarded the George Cross in recognition of their heroic war time struggle against enemy attack.

1945British troops entered the Belsan concentration camp after negotiating a truce with the German commandant. Soldiers found piles of dead and rotting corpses and thousands of sick and starving prisoners. Freddie Gilroy, a former miner and 23 year old soldier from County Durham was one of the first allied troops to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The oversized Freddie Gilroy and the Belsen Stragglers statue at Scarborough 'represents ordinary people pulled out of ordinary lives because of war'. See picture of a normal sized adult alongside the oversized sculture!

1953Reis Leming, a 22-year-old US airman stationed in Britain was presented with the George Medal. He had rescued 27 people in East Anglia during winter floods. The award was the first given to a foreigner during peacetime.

1964Footballer George Best made his debut for Northern Ireland against Wales.

1984Tommy Cooper, English comedian, collapsed and died from a heart attack in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act on the London Weekend Television variety show Live From Her Majesty's. This statue of Cooper (see picture) was unveiled in his birthplace of Caerphilly, Wales, in 2008 by fellow entertainer Sir Anthony Hopkins, (see plaque), patron of the Tommy Cooper Society.

1989Britain's worst football disaster at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. 96 football fans were crushed to death shortly after the start of the FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Most of those killed were from Liverpool. Fresh inquests into the 96 deaths began in Warrington on Monday, 31st March 2014. On 26th April 2016 the jury of 9 reached a verdict that vindicated the bereaved families who had fought for 27 years against South Yorkshire police claims that misbehaving supporters caused the disaster. It was the longest inquest in British legal history.

2000A white farmer in Zimbabwe became the first white farmer to be killed in land confrontations involving President Robert Mugabe's ruling party.

2010All flights in and out of the UK and several other European countries were suspended as ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland moved south. The cloud triggered the UK's worst airspace restriction in living memory and brought much of Europe to a standstill.

2013The death of music conductor Sir Colin Davis, aged 85. He made his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1959 and was its longest serving principal conductor.

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