1682The Chelsea Hospital, a retirement home and nursing home for British soldiers who were unfit for further duty due to injury or old age, was founded by Charles II.

1702The Daily Courant, the first successful English newspaper, was first published. It consisted of only 1 sheet but lasted until 1735 when it was merged with the Daily Gazetteer.

1708Queen Anne withheld Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, the last time a British monarch has vetoed legislation. The Bill's long title was 'An Act for settling the Militia of that Part of Great Britain called Scotland.'

1819The birth, at White Coppice in Lancashire, of Sir Henry Tate, English sugar producer & founder of London's Tate Gallery.

1845A Maori uprising against the British began in New Zealand .

1858The end of the Indian Mutiny that had lasted for 10 months. The Indian sepoys had mutinied after believing that their rifle cartridges had been lubricated in animal fat.

1864The Great Sheffield Flood: The largest man-made disaster ever to befall England destroyed 800 houses and killed 270 people in Sheffield when the Low Bradfield Reservoir bursts its banks while it was being filled for the first time. The claims for damages formed one of the largest insurance claims of the Victorian period.

1885The birth of Sir Malcolm Campbell, holder of world land and water speed records.

1916The birth, in Huddersfield, of Harold Wilson, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, British Labour Prime Minister from 1964-70, and again from 1974-1976 until he resigned, aged 60. This statue of Wilson (see picture) is outside Huddersfield Railway Station. It was unveiled on 9th July 1999 by the then Prime MInster Tony Blair.

1932Birth of Nigel Lawson, former editor of the Spectator turned politician. He was Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983-1989.

1945The huge Krupps munitions factory in Germany was destroyed when 1,000 Allied bombers took part in the biggest ever daylight raid.

1955The death, aged 73, of Sir Alexander Fleming, the British Nobel Prize winning bacteriologist who discovered penicillin.

1974Two self-proclaimed British Government, anti IRA spies, escaped from a top-security prison in Ireland where they were serving sentences for armed robbery.

1988The Bank of England pound note, first introduced on 12th March 1797, ceased to be legal tender in Britain at midnight. When the deadline for returning old notes was reached, it was estimated that some 70 million were still outstanding.

1997Ann Widdecombe became the first Prisons' Minister to visit all the 129 jails in Britain.

2013Former cabinet minister Chris Huhne and his former wife Vicky Pryce were both jailed for eight months for perverting the course of justice. The pair, sentenced at Southwark Crown Court, were convicted after she took driving licence points for him after he was caught speeding in 2003.

2014The death of the Rail Maritime and Transport union leader Bob Crow, at the age of 52. He led the RMT from 2002 and became one of Britain's most high-profile union leaders.

2014Dozens of firefighters were called out to deal with a blaze .... at a fire station. The retained fire crew at Downham Market in Norfolk could do nothing, because their own fire engine was caught up in the blaze that started in their own building.

2018 The death (aged 90) of the comedian Ken Dodd, just days after leaving hosital following a long term chest infection. He passed away in his home at Knotty Ash, Liverpool, the home that he was born in and had lived in for his entire life. Two days earlier he had married his long term partner of 40 years, Anne Jones. Ken Dodd made his professional debut on 27th September, 1954. His lengthy stage shows were legendary (one lasted for five and a quarter hours). In 1974 Ken Dodd earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the world's longest ever joke-telling session, when he told more than 1,500 jokes in three hours and six minutes on stage at Liverpool's Royal Court Theatre.

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