November 6th, 1217: On This Day England’s longest-lasting law, the Charter of the Forest, is sealed extending freedoms to the common people.

OTD the assassins of Julius Caesar were defeated at the Battle of Phillipi in northeast Greece.

On This Day, 19th September, the preserved body of “Ötzi the Iceman” was discovered in 1991.

September 2nd to 6th, 1666 : The Great Fire rages across London destroying four-fifths of the city. In the early hours of September 2nd, 1666, a fire had broken out in Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane, near London Bridge. At the time blazes were fairly common, which might explain the Lord Mayor of London’s reaction ( right ). Unfortunately for Sir Thomas and his fellow Londoners a long, hot, dry summer had turned the city’s largely wooden infrastructure into a tinderb

On This Day, 27 August 1896, Britain fought its shortest ever war lasting just over 40 minutes.

August 19th, 1588: On this day Queen Elizabeth I of England delivered her famous speech to her assembled land forces at Tilbury, Essex.

July 29th, 1588: On this day in 1588, the fearsome Spanish Armada is sighted off England’s southern coast.

February 12th , 1554 : England's forgotten queen, Lady Jane Grey, is executed for treason. In most popular histories, and as taught in probably all UK schools, succession of British monarchs in the early modern period goes Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary 1 and Elizabeth I. There is, however, a notable absence in this list of Tudor kings and queens, namely Lady Jane Grey. Admittedly the title 'lady' does not make her regal connection immediately obvious, but neither wou

On This Day , December 17th , the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia began. Held in honour of the deity Saturnus , as its name implies, the festivities were later extended through to December 23rd. The Origin story With the conclusion of autumn planting, and to coincide with the winter solstice, Saturnus , the god of seed and sowing, was honoured with a festival. In Roman mythology, he was an agricultural deity, identified with the Greek god Kronos , who was said to have

September 13th , 1944 : On This Day SOE operator Noor Inayat Khan was executed at Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria. At dawn on September 13th, 1944 [1] four women were led into a yard within the camp. There they were told to kneel and their death sentences were read out. Men of the Nazi SS (‘Schutzstaffel’) stepped forward and shot each woman in the back of the neck. One of them, however, despite having been severely beaten uttered her final word “ liberté ” . Such brave

August 26th , 55 BC : Gaius Julius Caesar first ‘invasion’ of Britain takes place. Britain was not unknown to the Classical world. As early as the 4th century BC, the Greeks, Phoenicians and Carthaginians traded for Cornish tin. Greek authors even refer to the Cassiterides, or 'tin islands' describing them being situated somewhere near the West coast of Europe (cf. Eratosthenes map below ). The first direct contact with the Romans, however, came when the general and future di

June 29th , 1613 : The Globe Theatre burns to the ground. The first recorded performance of William Shakespeare’s “ All is True ” took place at The Globe Theatre on the banks of the River Thames in June 1613. The play, now more commonly called “ Henry VIII ” , is not one of Shakespeare’s best known and may have disappeared into obscurity if it had not been for the disaster that befell the theatre. The production, which focuses on Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, was

May 22nd , 1455 : The Wars of the Roses began. The Wars of the Roses began not on a battlefield but with a bloody clash fought on foot through the streets of St Albans which, at the time, was a modest market town that lies 20 miles north-west of London. Unrest in England had been building since Henry VI inherited the throne in 1422 when aged about nine months. During his long minority, the country was ruled by a council of nobles between whom the bitterest rivalries arose. He

On This Day, 15th March 44 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated.

February 16th , 1923 : One hundred years ago today Egyptologist Howard Carter unseals Tutankhamun’s tomb. Despite the builders’ best efforts most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were robbed of their treasures. The only one to remain untouched was that of boy king Tutankhamun, the seemingly unremarkable 11th Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, who was made famous by the discovery of his intact tomb (KV 62) by the British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922. Who found the tomb

February 4th , 1555 : John Rogers becomes the first Protestant martyr to be burnt at the stake in Queen Mary I’s persecutions. Formerly an orthodox Catholic priest, Rogers had converted to Protestantism after an encounter in Antwerp with William Tyndale. Rogers was born c. AD 1500 in Aston, Staffordshire. Having graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1526, six year later (1532) he was made rector of Holy Trinity, Queenhithe, London. In 1534 Rogers became a chaplain to

On This Day, January 22nd, 1879, the attempt to extend British colonial influence into Zululand are met with fierce resistance as Zulu warriors rout British troops at Isandlwana, South Africa.

November 22nd, 1718: On This Day probably the most notorious pirate, Edward Teach, known as ‘Blackbeard’, met his demise.

On this day, in the early hours of October 12th, 1915, a British national, still wearing her nurses’ uniform, was led out into a yard at Belgium’s national rifle range in Brussels. Alongside her was Phillipe Bancq, a Brussels-based architect. Shortly after dawn, two German firing-squads, each of eight men, were paraded in front of the pair. When ordered, the soldiers fired executing both Bancq and the British nurse - Edith Louisa Cavell.

On This Day, February 26th in 1852, 450 perish as the troopship HMS Birkenhead sinks off the coast of South Africa. The soldiers' chivalry gave rise to the unofficial ‘women and children first’ code of conduct for abandoning ship. The ‘Birkenhead drill’ as it was termed in Rudyard Kipling's 1893 tribute to the Royal Marines, ‘Soldier an' Sailor Too’, would later come to describe courage in the face of hopeless circumstances.