1152 – Henry II of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine.
1756 – The Seven Years' War began when Great Britain declared war on France.
1803 – The Napoleonic Wars began when The United Kingdom revoked the Treaty of Amiens and declared war on France.
1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate.
1812 – John Bellingham was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval.
1872 – Bertrand Russell, British mathematician, historian, philosopher, and Nobel Prize laureate was born.
1944 – The deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union government began.
1991 - Helen Sharman became Britain's first astronaut.