Swindon

1951: The emergence of unusually shaped flowers in Chiseldon was brought to our attention by a reader. The blooms were fasciated - an obscure term meaning oddly lengthened and ribbon-like - and the phenomenon was so far confined to pyrethrums of a variety called Esther Reid. Like other plants known to produce fasciated blooms, the species tended to produce two or three flowers per stem.

1961: A Tiger Moth biplane flew low over Stratton before landing in a nearby field. About 100 people from the neighbourhood ran to offer assistance, but as they approached the pilot took off again. It was later revealed that the pilot, who was just 18 years old, had dropped in briefly to ask for directions while flying from Marshfield in Gloucestershire to the Wiltshire School of Flying at Thruxton.

1971: Swindon MP David Stoddart insisted that his party, Labour, was not split over the ongoing question of whether Britain should join the European Common Market. He predicted that the party’s national executive would decide at its forthcoming meeting that the proposed terms of entry as they stood were not acceptable in terms of British interests.

The world

1137 – Eleanor of Aquitaine married Prince Louis, later King Louis VII of France, at the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux.

1554: Mary I married Philip II of Spain.

1587: Christianity was banned in Japan.

1593: Henry IV of France publicly converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.

1603: James VI of Scotland was crowned king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would occur in 1707.

1788: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K550).

1848: Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl, prime minister from 1902-05, was born in Scotland. He was foreign secretary from 1916-19 when he made his famous Balfour Declaration, promising the Zionists a homeland in Palestine.

1894: Walter Brennan, US actor who played character parts in more than 100 films and winner of three Oscars for best supporting actor, was born.

1907: Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s experimental camp, to test the feasibility of Scouting, began on Brownsea Island, near Poole. Four days later, the Boy Scouts organisation was created.

1909: Louis Bleriot became the first man to fly across the Channel, flying his three-cylinder monoplane from near Calais to Northfall Meadow near Dover Castle.

1934: The Nazis assassinated Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.

1943: Benito Mussolini was forced out of office by the Grand Council of Fascism and was replaced by Pietro Badoglio.

1948: Bread rationing ended in Britain.

1959: The hovercraft, the SRN 1 as it was called, made its first English Channel crossing - from Dover to Calais - in a little over two hours.

1965: Former champion British boxer and nightclub owner Freddie Mills was found shot dead in his car in Soho.

1978: The first test-tube baby was born in Oldham General Hospital. It was a girl, and she was named Louise Joy Brown.

1989: Just 3.6 miles short of Dover, woman pilot Gloria Pullan had to ditch Louis Bleriot’s historic plane in the Channel while attempting to recreate his crossing in 1909.

2016: Thousands of BHS staff were told they faced redundancy consultation as administrator Duff & Phelps geared up to close the chain’s 114 remaining stores.

BIRTHDAYS Annie Ross, singer/actress, 87; Nicole Farhi, fashion designer, 71; Sheena McDonald, broadcaster, 63; Iman, model and widow of David Bowie, 62; Matt LeBlanc, actor, 50; Lord Nicholas Windsor, son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, 47; Kevin Phillips, former footballer, 44.