1793 – Beginning of the Reign of Terror in France, in which thousands go to the guillotine during the French Revolution.

1872 – Birth of English illustrator and cartoonist William Heath Robinson.

1910 – The colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony are united to form the Union of South Africa.

1962 – Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Nazi holocaust, is hanged in Israel for his crimes against humanity. During World War II, Adolf Hitler enlisted Eichmann to carry out his final solution to the Jewish question – the extermination of millions of Jews in Nazi death camps.

1996 - Harvard Professor Timothy Leary, who urged the American youth of the 1960s to take the drug LSD and ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’, dies of cancer aged 75.

1998 – Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) confirms she’s leaving The Spice Girls.