1648: Colonel Pride of Cromwell's New Model Army purges the Long Parliament of MPs sympathetic to King Charles I, in order for the King's trial to go ahead; came to be known as "Pride's Purge"

1745: Charles Edward Stewart's army begins its retreat during the second Jacobite rising.

1760: British troops under Sir Eyre Coote managed to complete the investment of the principal French base in India, Pondicherry. The siege lasted until 15 January 1761, when the town fell.

1768: The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published

1865: The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, banning slavery

1917: Second Lieutenant Emerson of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, was at the forefront of an attack on the Hindenburg Line, and with his platoon took some 400 yards of German trench. Then, with only eight men, he defended his position against repeated German counter-attacks. Although himself wounded, he refused to be evacuated since all the other officers in his company had already fallen casualty. Eventually, repelling another German attack, he fell mortally wounded. His leadership, however, inspired his men to hold out until reinforcements were finally able to relieve them. Emerson was awarded the Victoria Cross.

Most of Halifax, Canada is destroyed after a French munitions freighter, the Mont Blanc, coming through the Narrows carrying 2,300 tons of picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 35 tons of high octane gasoline, and 10 tons of gun cotton, collided with the Belgium steamship Imo.

The collision sent the Mont Blanc towards the shore, its picric acid ablaze as the crew abandoned ship.Minutes later the ship brushed a pier, setting that on fire. The Halifax Fire Department responded quickly, and was just positioning their engine up to the nearest hydrant when the Mont Blanc exploded. The blast leveled most of the port and town centre killing 2,000, injuring over 8,000, leaving 10,000 homeless.

The shock wave from the explosion shattered windows at Truro, 60 miles away. A recent theory suggests that this was the greatest man made explosion before the atomic bomb test in 1945.

1921: The Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed in London by British and Irish representatives

1922: One year to the day after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Free State cames into existence

1941: HMS Perseus, a submarine based in Alexandria, hit an Italian mine off Cephalonia whilst returning from patrol, and sank, coming to rest on the bottom at a depth of 170 feet. Five men survived in an aft compartment. Faced with the daunting prospect of escape, they consumed a bottle of rum. Leading Stoker Capes and another man then attempted to escape, but sadly only Capes made it to the surface, with a broken pelvis. Despite his injuries, he managed to swim seven miles to Cephalonia, where he was found and sheltered by the Greek Resistance. After eighteen months, they succeeded in smuggling him to safety in neutral Turkey.

1942: 2 Group of Bomber Command mounted a large-scale low-level raid on the Philips electronics factories in Eindhoven. The factories were a key supplier of components for the Germans, and thus judged worth the high risks that the bomber crews would face - Eindhoven's distance from the Dutch coast meant that they would have to attack without fighter escort. 47 Ventura, 36 Boston and 10 Mosquito aircraft took part. Most of the bombing proved very accurate, and production was disrupted for six months. Sadly, some bombs did fall astray, causing 148 Dutch fatalities. The price for the attackers also proved high - 15% were shot down (9 Venturas, 4 Bostons and 1 Mosquito) with another three damaged aircraft crashing in the UK on their return.

1965: Pakistan's Islamic Ideology Advisory Committee recommends that Islamic Studies be made a compulsory subject for Muslim students from primary to graduate level

1975: IRA terrorists took a couple hostage in Balcombe Street, London