1988
Death of Enzo Ferrari, Italian car manufacturer .

1984
Death of J. B. Priestley, British novelist and playwright

1979
The Fastnet yacht race was hit by a freak storm in the Irish Sea. 15 people were killed and 23 yachts were sunk or abandoned

1969
British Troops sent to Northern Ireland

1958
Death of Frédéric Joliot, French physicist, Nobel Prize winner .

1956
Death of Bertolt Brecht, dramatist

1951
Death of William Randolph Hearst, newspaper proprietor

1947
sub-continent partitioned to form India (Secular, Hindu majority) and Pakistan (Islamic)

1936
Death in Owensboro, Kentucky of Rainey Bethea, the last person to be executed in public in the United States.

1922
Death of Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, newspaper proprietor

1908
The first beauty contest was held, in Folkestone, England .

1907
Feliks Topolski born 1907 (died 1989) Artist. After a quarter of a century's work in Britain he became widely known in the early 1960s for his portraits accompanying John Freeman's Face to Face television interviews.

1867
Birth of John Galsworthy, writer and Nobel Laureate
