On This Day - 2nd April

1805 - Hans Christian Andersen born
1908 - Buddy Ebsen born
1914 - Alec Guinness born
1920 - Jack Webb born
1939 - Marvin Gaye born
1945 - Linda Hunt born
1947 - Emmylou Harris born
1954 - Ron "Horshack" Palillo born
1962 - A new style of pedestrian crossing causes confusion among both drivers and pedestrians following its launch in London.

1977 - Red Rum has galloped into racing history by winning the Grand National for a record third time.
1982 - Argentina invades the British territory of the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic.
1986 - Four people, including an eight-month old baby, are sucked out of a TWA passenger jet after a bomb explodes ripping a hole in its side.

1998 - Former French cabinet minister Maurice Papon has been found guilty of war crimes for his part in deporting Jews from France during World War II.
2005 - Pope John Paul II dies at the age of 84 following heart failure, ending one of the longest pontificates in history.

2011 - India beat Sri Lanka to win the Cricket World Cup. Also a young police officer is killed by a booby-trap car bomb in Northern Ireland.

On This Day - 1st April

1578 - William Harvey born
1815 - Otto von Bismarck born
1873 - Sergei Rachmaninoff born
1908 - Abraham Maslow born
1917 - Scott Joplin dies
1918 - The RAF is formed from the Royal Flying Corps
1920 - Toshiro Mifune born
1924 - Adolf Hitler imprisoned
1926 - Anne McCaffrey born
1932 - Debbie Reynolds and Gordon Jump born

1957 - The BBC receives a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary about spaghetti crops in Switzerland.
1938 - Ali MacGraw born
1981 - Hannah Spearitt born

1983 - Tens of thousands of peace demonstrators have formed a human chain stretching 14 miles (22.5 kilometres) across a southern English county.
1990 - Up to 1,000 prisoners run amok at Strangeways Prison in Manchester in a violent protest against overcrowding.

1999 - A legally-binding minimum rate of pay (minimum wage) has been introduced in Britain for the first time.
2000 - The Enigma machine, used by the Germans to encrypt messages in the Second World War, is stolen from Bletchley Park.

2001 - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been arrested and taken to prison, ending a heavily-armed standoff at his Belgrade villa.

On This Day - 31st March

1596 - Rene Descartes born
1732 - Joseph Haydn born
1855 - Novelist Charlotte Bronte dies
1915 - Henry Morgan born
1925 - Leo Buscaglia born
1927 - César Chávez and William Daniels born
1928 - Gordie Howe born
1934 - Shirley Jones born
1935 - Richard Chamberlain and Herb Alpert born
1943 - Christopher Walken born
1945 - Gabe Kaplan born
1948 - Al Gore and Rhea Perlman born
1953 - More than 1,500 attend the funeral of Queen Mary at St George's Chapel in Windsor.
1959 - The spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, crosses the border into India after an epic 15-day journey on foot from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, over the Himalayan mountains.

1966 - Harold Wilson and the Labour party win the general election with a landslide majority of 96 seats in the House of Commons.
1971 - Pavel Bure and Ewan McGregor born
1972 - More than 500 people attend a rally in London ahead of a four-day demonstration against nuclear arms.

1986 - Thousands of people take part in festivities to mark the historic final hours of 97 years of local rule in London, as the GLC is abolished
1990 - An anti-poll tax rally in central London erupts into the worst riots in the city for a century.

2001 - Footballer David 'Rocky' Rocastle dies of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, aged 33.

On This Day - 30th March

1853 - Vincent Van Gogh born
1856 - Crimean war ends
1913 - Frankie Laine born
1930 - John Astin, Rolf Harris and Peter Marshall born
1937 - Warren Beatty born
1940 - Astrud Gilberto born
1945 - Eric Clapton born
1951 - Julius Rosenberg, an American electrical engineer and his wife Ethel are found guilty by the Federal Court in New York of passing secrets about the atomic bomb to Russia.
1962 - M.C. Hammer born
1964 - Ian Ziering born
1968 - Celine Dion born
1976 - Matt Doran born
1978 - The Conservative Party recruits advertisers Saatchi & Saatchi to revamp its image and get its political message across ahead of the General Election.
1979 -
1979 - Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Airey Neave is killed by an IRA car bomb as he leaves the House of Commons car park. Also Norah Jones born
1981 - President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded when lone gunman John Hinckley opens fire in Washington.
1983 - Scott Moffatt born
1992 - British Prime Minister John Major has mounted his soapbox to urge voters in Cheltenham to elect John Taylor as the first black Conservative MP.
2002 - The Queen Mother dies peacefully in her sleep aged 101.

On This Day - 29th March

1790 - 10th President of the U.S John Tyler born.
1867 - Cy Young born
1905 - Philip Ahn born
1918 - Sam Walton born
1918 - Pearl Bailey born
1943 - John Major born
1950 - Bud Cort born
1964 - Elle Macpherson born
1967 - The stricken oil supertanker, the Torrey Canyon, refuses to sink despite more than a day of heavy bombing by the RAF and the Royal Navy

1968 - Lucy Lawless born
1971 - Lieutenant William Calley is found guilty of murder at a court martial for his part in the My Lai massacre which claimed the lives of 500 South Vietnamese civilians. Also Charles Manson and three members of his hippy cult are sentenced to death in Los Angeles.

1976 - Jennifer Capriati born
1981 - Thousands of people jog through the normally quiet Sunday streets of the capital to try and cross the finish line of the first ever London marathon.
1982 - Hideaki Takizawa born
1999 - The case of James Hanratty is sent back to the Court of Appeal - 37 years after he was hanged for the notorious A6 murder in Bedfordshire.

On This Day - 28th March

1868 - Maxim Gorky born
1899 - August Anheuser Busch born
1921 - Dirk Bogarde born
1933 - The Reichstag burns down
1939 - Spanish Civil War ends
1941 - Author Virginia Woolf commits suicide
1943 - Composer Sergei Rachmaninov dies
1944 - Ken Howard born
1948 - Dianne Wiest born
1955 - Reba McEntire born

1965 - Martin Luther King leads protests to the steps of the state capital of Montgomery in Alabama.
1971 - Juliandra Gillen born
1979 - Radioactive steam leaks into the atmosphere at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania prompting fears for the safety of the plant's 500 workers. Also Prime Minister James Callaghan loses a parliamentary vote of confidence by a minority of one - forcing him to call an early general election.

1981 - Julia Stiles born
1983 - Ian Macgregor, leader of the British Steel Corporation is named as the new chairman of the National Coal Board.
1991 - A jury returns a verdict of accidental death at the end of the inquest of 95 Liverpool football fans crushed to death in Sheffield.

On This Day - 27th March

1899 - Gloria Swanson born
1921 - Harold Nicholas born
1924 - Sarah Vaughan born
1931 - David Janssen born
1942 - Michael York born
1963 - A far-reaching report giving the first full description of the state of the railways recommends the closure of large sections of the network. Also Quentin Tarantino born
1970 - Mariah Carey born
1977 - 583 people die when two jumbo jets collide on a runway in the popular holiday destination of Tenerife.

1980 - 123 oil rig workers die when the Alexander Kielland North Sea accommodation platform collapses during gales.
1989 - Russian voters have gone to the polls - with early indications that many Communist candidates have been rejected by the electorate.
1994 - The troubled European Fighter Aircraft makes its inaugural flight two years later than expected.