On This Day - 19th March
1330
Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent and son of Edward I, was beheaded (aged 28) at Winchester Castle, for plotting against the king.
1649The House of Commons passed an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it 'useless and dangerous to the people of England'.
1702Anne Stuart, sister of Mary, succeeded to the throne of England, Scotland
and Ireland on the death of William III of Orange.
1813Dr. David Livingstone was born here (see 
picture) at Blantyre, on the outskirts of Glasgow. He was a Scottish missionary and explorer and the first
white man to see the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi.
1821The birth of Sir Richard Francis Burton, English scholar and explorer who discovered
the source of the Nile.
1921Irish War of Independence: One of the biggest engagements of the war took place at Crossbarry in County Cork. About 100 Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers escaped an attempt by over 1,300 British forces to encircle them.
1921 The birth, in Caerphilly, of Tommy Cooper (Thomas Frederick Cooper), comedian and magician. 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.
1938The BBC televised its first rugby match, the Calcutta Cup game between
England and Scotland at Twickenham. Scotland won 21-16.
1945World War II: Adolf Hitler issued his 'Nero Decree' ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed in order to prevent their use by Allied forces as they penetrated deep within Germany.
1958Britain’s first planetarium opened at Madame Tussaud’s, London.
1965The Tailor And Cutter Magazine ran an article asking The Rolling Stones
to wear ties to save tie makers from financial disaster.
1969British troops landed on the Caribbean island of Anguilla, after the
island declared itself a republic. They were well received, and the island
remained a UK dependency.
1969The 1,263 ft. tall TV-mast at Emley Moor in Yorkshire collapsed due to a build up of ice. The current Emley Moor transmitting station, built in 1971, (see 
picture) is the
tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom and is a Grade II listed building.
1982A group of Argentines landed at South Georgia (a dependency of the disputed Falklands Islands which Britain claimed in 1833) and planted their nation's flag. The provocation led to war between Britain
and Argentina.
1986Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Prince Andrew and Sarah
Ferguson. Exactly six years later it was announced that they were to separate.
1988Two British soldiers, in civilian clothes, blundered into an IRA funeral
in Northern Ireland and were kicked and beaten to death.
2003British troops were poised to invade Iraq as Saddam Hussein defied a
final United States ultimatum to leave the country or face war.
2015 Top Gear presenters James May and Richard Hammond rejected an offer to present the season's last three shows without the suspended star, Jeremy Clarkson. On 25th March the BBC's director general confirmed that Jeremy Clarkson's contract would not be renewed, after an 'unprovoked physical attack' on a Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon
2015 Margaret Aspinall and Trevor Hicks, who campaigned for 20 years to secure fresh Hillsborough inquests, received their CBE medals from the Queen. Britain's worst sporting tragedy took place at the Hillsborough Stadium, in Sheffield on 15th April 1989. 96 people died as a result of the crush on the terraces at the Liverpool v Nottingham Forest football match.