Swindon:

1950: Christopher Love, 13, who lived in Victoria Road, won the piano solo competition in his age category at the Swindon Eisteddfod. He was among 23 competitors for the accolade. Christopher also sang in the final of the boys class and took third place from among a nine-strong field.

1950: South Marston Parish Council decided at its latest meeting to ask the Vickers-Armstrong engineering plant to re-instate one footpath on company land and relocate another. The path the council wanted reinstated ran from Timber Cottages to Highworth Road, while the other linked Thornhill Lane and Stratton Church.

1961: Mr CJM Slade, who lived in The Circle, Pinehurst, was to be among 40 delegates from Britain to the second Duke of Edinburgh’s Study Conference in Montreal the following May. Their mission was to take part in a series of international discussions about the human consequences of the changing industrial landscape across the Commonwealth and Empire. Members of the delegation were selected by senior industrialists and trade unionists.

1961: Eight-year-old Suzanne Rees, daughter of Osborne Street couple Mr and Mrs D Rees, added to an already impressive list of dance trophies when she took part in the Reading and District Musical Festival. Her accolades included four first places, four seconds and a third across disciplines including solos, ensemble work, ballet, modern and tap. Suzanne had started dancing aged only two and begun taking part in competitions three years later.

1971: A large number of people in Belize, British Honduras, anxiously awaited the arrival of a Hercules transport aircraft from RAF Lyneham. Its cargo included a generator crankshaft, a vital component in a machine which provided electricity for thousands of homes. Those homes had been without power for the past week following a sudden mechanical failure.

1971: Flight Sergeant Bill Crump, a 30-year-old RAF airman from Wootton Bassett, was due to head for Hong Hong later in the month to take part in the annual festival of what would remain a British colony until 1997. Flt Sgt Crump was a crew member on a Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft which was taking time out from Soviet submarine tracking duties to appear in an airshow. A Vulcan nuclear bomber was also to take part.

THE WORLD

1577: English explorer and navigator Sir Francis Drake began his voyage to sail around the world.

1708: William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, was born in London.

1738: Astronomer Sir William Herschel, who discovered Uranus, was born in Hanover. He died in Slough in 1822.

1837: Isaac Pitman’s stenographic sound-hand, the first shorthand system, was published, price 4d.

1899: Winston Churchill was captured by the Boers while covering the war as a reporter for the Morning Post. He escaped a few weeks later.

1901: An electrical hearing aid was patented by Miller Reese of New York.

1923: Rampant inflation in Germany reached a peak when the mark (4.2 to the dollar in 1914) rose to 4,200,000,000 to the dollar.

1956: Elvis Presley’s first film, Love Me Tender, was premiered in New York.

1968: The Cunard flagship Queen Elizabeth docked at Southampton for the last time. She was replaced by the Queen Elizabeth II.

1969: ITV channel ATV screened the first colour television commercial in Britain - for Birds Eye peas.

1983: The Greenham Common women’s group mounted their first protest as cruise missiles arrived at the US airbase in Berkshire.

2002: Moors murderer Myra Hindley died in jail, aged 60.

2016: Prison officers were ordered back to work after thousands joined a protest held amid claims jails were ‘’in meltdown’’.

BIRTHDAYS Ed Asner, actor, 88; Petula Clark, singer, 85; Sam Waterston, actor, 77; Frida Lyngstad, singer (ABBA), 72; Beverly D’Angelo, actress, 66; Johnny Lee Miller, actor, 45; Peter Phillips, son of the Princess Royal and Capt Mark Phillips, 40; Gemma Atkinson, actress, 33.