1431Joan of Arc, the French peasant girl who became a national heroine leading French troops against the English, was burnt at the stake in Rouen for heresy.

1536Eleven days after he had his second wife Anne Boleyn beheaded, King Henry VIII married Jane Seymour, former lady-in-waiting to Anne.

1588The last ship of the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel.

1656The formation of the Grenadier Guards, the senior regiment of the British Army.

1820 The death, aged 33, of William Bradley, often known as Giant Bradley or the Yorkshire Giant. He was the tallest recorded British man, measuring 7 feet 9 inches (2.36 m) tall. He was born at this house in Market Weighton (see picture) - East Riding of Yorkshire. See also close up of the plaque ( picture) on his birthplace. This full size, oak statue of him (see picture) is close to the house where he was born.

1842An assassination attempt was made on Queen Victoria as she drove down Constitution Hill in London with her husband Prince Albert. The would-be assassin was John Francis.

1914The new, and at that time the largest Cunard ocean liner, RMS Aquitania weighing 45,647 tons, set sails on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York City. In her 36 years of service, Aquitania had the longest service career of any 20th century express liner, a record that stood until 2004, when the Queen Elizabeth 2 (with an ultimate career service of 40 years) became the longest-serving liner.

1929The British Labour Party won the general election with 287 seats.

1942World War II: The RAF carried out its first 1,000 plus bombing raid of Germany, sending 1,047 aircraft to bomb Cologne.

1948The British Citizenship Act conferred the status of British subjects on all Commonwealth citizens.

1959The first full-size experimental hovercraft, the SR-N1, built by Saunders-Roe and designed by Sir Christopher Cockerell, was launched at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Cockerell lived and died in Hythe and this plaque (see picture), on a monument in Hythe, outlines his work.

1972Five children died and thirteen others were injured when a wooden roller coaster train came off its tracks at the Battersea Park funfair in London. After the accident, the 'Big Dipper ' was closed and dismantled. With the lack of a main attraction, the fair's popularity quickly declined and the funfair closed in 1974.

1972The Official IRA announced a ceasefire, but the Provisional IRA said it would continue fighting until the British left Northern Ireland.

1972The Angry Brigade, a small British anarchist group, went on trial over a series of 25 bombings throughout the United Kingdom.

1986England cricketer Ian Botham was banned from international matches for two months for possession of drugs.

1989British singer Cliff Richard released his 100th single record, entitled 'The Best of Me'.

2003The death of Mickie Most, record producer, with a string of hit singles with acts such as The Animals, Herman's Hermits, Donovan, Kim Wilde and Suzi Quatro, often issued on his own RAK Records label.

2013Mark Bridger was found guilty of abducting and murdering five-year-old April Jones, in a sexually motivated attack. The schoolgirl went missing on 1st October 2012 near her Machynlleth home, sparking the biggest search in UK police history. Her remains were never found, but fragments of bone consistent with a juvenile human skull were found among ashes in the woodburner at Bridger's home, along with April's blood near to a number of knives, including one which has been badly burned. From the time of his arrest, Bridger, the 37th person to be given a whole-life tariff, stuck steadfastly to his story that he could not remember where he had put April's remains. At the time of April's disappearance, ribbons were tied to the railings around the town's clock tower, (see picture), on shop doors and pinned to trees.

2019EE switched on the UK's first high speed 5G mobile network service, with those in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester being the first to get the faster services. Prices for 5G - which required new handsets - started at £54 per month for 10 gigabytes of data. Huawei 5G phones were excluded from the launch, thanks to a recent US ban on American companies dealing with the Chinese owned Huawei.

• Contact Form