1591 The death of Dr. John Fian, a Scottish schoolmaster and purported sorcerer from Prestonpans. He and other witches were arrested and extensively tortured (including having his fingernails removed with wooden splints placed into the wounds). The events became known as the North Berwick witch trials. 'On This Day' he was finally taken to Castlehill in Edinburgh, placed in a cart, strangled, and burnt.

1606The trial of Guy Fawkes, (born here - see picture) and his fellow conspirators began. They were charged with treason for attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament in November 1605.

1757The birth, in Richmond, of Henry Greathead, the pioneering lifeboat builder from South Shields. It took some years before his lifeboat became well known to the public. The first was purchased in 1798 by Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland, for North Shields. By 1802 Greathead's work was "deemed a fit subject for national munificence" and, over a period of years, 30 more lifeboats followed. Greathead never took out a patent on his invention, and was always willing to share his plans with others for the public good.

1832The birth, at Daresbury parsonage - Cheshire, of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (‘Lewis Carroll’), the English mathematician and keen photographer who wrote Alice in Wonderland. Born at Daresbury Parsonage in Cheshire (now in ruins and in the care of the National Trust - (see picture), he is commemorated in this stained glass window at All Saint's Church - Daresbury. See a sequence of two pictures showing sections of the window. Image two shows Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, who was his main inspiration for the stories 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass'.

1868E.D. Young reported to the Royal Geographical Society that Dr. Livingstone, the British explorer and missionary in Africa, was still alive. Livingstone was born here in Blantyre (see picture) and died at Old Chitambo in North Rhodesia (now Zambia).

1945 The Nazis' biggest concentration camp at Auschwitz in south-western Poland was liberated. The millions killed during the Holocaust are remembered each year in services across the UK, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day.

1969Hard line Unionist Ian Paisley was jailed for three months along with Ronald Bunting, for organising an illegal counter-demonstration against a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in Armagh. He was released during a general amnesty for people convicted of political offences.

1981Rupert Murdoch's bid to buy 'The Times' and 'Sunday Times' was given the go ahead, without the investigation usually required by the Monopolies Commission.

1989Thomas Sopwith, British aircraft designer, died aged 101. Remembered for his Sopwith Camel and Sopwith Pup planes he also won a £4,000 prize for the longest flight from England to the Continent in a British built aeroplane, flying 169 miles in 3 hours 40 minutes. His company produced more than 18,000 British World War I aircraft for the allied forces, including 5,747 of the famous Sopwith Camel single-seat fighter. Sopwith was awarded the CBE in 1918.

1993Mrs. Thatcher told journalist Woodrow Wyatt that she thought most of the members of the House of Lords were so useless that the Lords needed to be reformed.

1993Veronica Bland became the first passive smoking worker in the UK to win compensation for damage to her health at work when she agreed to a settlement of £15,000 from Stockport Council in a personal injury claim.

1995Manchester United's Eric Cantona was fined £20,000 and a football ban over his kung fu-style attack on a fan. Cantona was nicknamed 'King Eric' by Manchester United fans, and he was voted the club's greatest ever player by the Inside United magazine.

2001The first Holocaust Memorial Day was held in Britain, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops. The Holocaust resulted in the annihilation of 6 million European Jews and millions of others by the Nazi regime. See picture of the Holocaust memorial at Middleton, Manchester.

2003Tony Blair and George Bush held talks at Camp David (the country retreat of the President of the United States), and vowed to hound Saddam Hussein for 'as long as it takes' to drive him from power.

2014The National Governors' Association declared that many schools in England were finding it very difficult to recruit senior staff. According to the association, applications for head teacher posts were sometimes littered with basic grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

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