This Day in History - 6th January

1066The coronation of Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, succeeding Edward the Confessor. He reigned for ten months before he died at the Battle of Hastings, fighting the Norman invaders led by William the Conqueror. Harold was the first of only three Kings of England to have died in battle; the other two being Richard I and Richard III.

1367Birth in Bordeaux of King Richard II, the last of the Plantagenet kings of England. He was the son of Edward the Black Prince.

1412The birth of St Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans. She was a great heroine of French history and believed that she had a divine mission to drive the British from France. She died at the stake after being captured by the Burgundians and sold to the British.

1540King Henry VIII married ‘the Flanders Mare’, Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife. The King found her so different from her picture that he swore they had brought him a Flanders mare. She was Queen of England from 6th January 1540 to 9th July 1540. The marriage was never consummated, and, following the annulment of their marriage, Anne was given a generous settlement by the King and was referred to thereafter as the King's Beloved Sister. She lived to see the coronation of Henry's daughter, (Mary I) and outlasted all of Henry's wives.

1916World War I - The British Government introduced conscription, to replace the many thousands killed in the trenches in France.

1928Four people were drowned, and many paintings in the basement of the Tate Gallery were severely damaged, when the Thames flooded. The water was deep enough to fill the moat of the Tower of London.

1938The 82-year-old Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, arrived in London from Vienna with several of his students, to escape the persecution of Jews.

1943The birth of Terry Venables, former football player and manager and national team manager of England from 1994 to 1996 (leading the team to the semi-finals of the 1996 European Championships).

1960Nigella Lawson, TV chef, writer and daughter of Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, was born. Renowned for her flirtatious manner of presenting, Lawson has been called the 'queen of food porn'. Chef, Gary Rhodes, spoke out by suggesting that her viewers were attracted to her smile rather than the cooking itself!

1977The music publisher EMI ended its contract with the notorious punk rock group, Sex Pistols, after reports of abusive behaviour at Heathrow Airport.

1983The Royal Navy arrested a Danish trawler captain (Kent Kirk) for illegally entering British waters in the first confrontation of the ' fish war'. The move followed Denmark's refusal to agree to proposals for a new EEC fishing regime.

1987The first episode of TV's Inspector Morse was broadcast.

1999Prince Edward & Sophie Rhys-Jones announced their engagement.

2013Jessops, the High Street camera retailer founded in Leicester in 1935 by Frank Jessop, went into administration. On 11th January it was announced that Jessops was to shut all of its stores at the end of the day's trading, resulting in the loss of 1,370 jobs.

201454 year old Stephen Gough, the so-called 'Naked Rambler' was jailed for 16 months after a jury took just two minutes to find him guilty of breaching an antisocial behaviour order designed to prevent him from appearing nude in public. Gough has been convicted for dozens of offences, mainly in Scotland, where he was repeatedly arrested during attempts to walk from Land's End to John o'Groats without clothes.

2015 The death was announced of D-Day veteran Bernard Jordan (aged 90). In June 2014 he sparked a police search when he left the care home in Hove to join fellow veterans and attended the 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations in France. His wife Irene (aged 88) died just days after her husband. They left their entire state, estimated at being worth around £600,000 to the RNLI.