What happened this week in history
In 793 - Vikings raided the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.
1042 - Edward the Confessor became King of England.
1405 - Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, was beheaded for conspiring against Henry IV; the first English bishop to be executed.
1824 - The washing machine was patented by Noah Cushing of Quebec.
1829 - The UK’s first municipal swimming pool outside London opened in Liverpool.
1896 - A car was reported as stolen for the first time.
1923 - A government bill made divorce possible on the grounds of the husband’s infidelity.
1929 - Margaret Bondfield became Britain’s first female cabinet minister.
1949 - George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.
1961 - The Duke of Kent married Katherine Worsley.
1968 - James Earl Ray was arrested in London Airport on charges of conspiracy and murder in connection with the assassination of civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King.
1978 - Naomi James, from New Zealand, became the first woman to sail single-handed around the world.
1982 - Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War saw 56 British servicemen killed by an Argentine air attack on two landing ships, RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram.
1991 - Lincolnshire libraries banned Billy Bunter books because they were too old-fashioned for children to read.
1996 - Alex Greaves became the first woman to ride in the Derby.
1998 - The EU froze Yugoslav assets in protest at Serb action in Kosovo.
1999 - Former cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken was jailed for 18 months after he admitted lying during a failed libel action.
2001 - Tony Blair and the Labour Party were elected to a second term, with a majority of 167 overall in the House of Commons.
2014 - The world’s oldest man, Alexander Imich, died in New York, aged 111.