This Day in History - 7th November

1665 The first edition of the London Gazette was printed. It is the world's longest running journal and carried news of military appointments and engagements.

1687 The birth of William Stukeley, English clergyman, friend of Sir Isaac Newton and antiquarian who pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury.

1805 The birth of Thomas Brassey, an English civil engineering contractor who was responsible for building much of the world's railways in the 19th century. By 1847, he had built one-third of the railways in Britain, and by time of his death in 1870 he had built an incredible one in every twenty miles of railway in the world.

1935 The Royal National Institute for the Blind distributed its first Talking Books of players and records to blind & partially sighted people.

1942 The birth of Jean Shrimpton, leading English model whose face and figure, enhanced with a miniskirt, set the fashion for the 60s.

1945 Group Captain H J Wilson became the first man to exceed 600 miles per hour (970 km/h), flying a Gloster Meteor jet fighter at Herne Bay. The aircraft was powered by two 3,500 lb thrust Rolls Royce Derwent V turbojets.

1953 The birth of Lucinda Green MBE, former champion British equestrian. She began riding at the age of four and is most well known for winning the Badminton Horse Trials a record six times, on six different horses.

1956 An official ceasefire during the Suez Crisis following the British and French invasion of Egypt after President Nasser had announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal.

1964 The country's first drink-driving advertisement was shown on television, with the message "Drinking and driving are dangerous."

1967 British heavyweight champion Henry Cooper beat challenger Billy Walker to become the only boxer to win three Lonsdale Belts outright.

1974 Lord Lucan mysteriously disappeared following the murder of his children's nanny and a serious assault on his wife.

1978 The birth, in Peckham, London of the footballer Rio Gavin Ferdinand. He joined Manchester United in July 2002 for around £30 million, breaking the transfer fee record.

1996 A team of British, American and Australian scientists reported evidence that life on Earth originated some 350 million years earlier than previously believed.

1996 The closure of 'Butlins - Barry Island' in south Wales, Billy Butlin's last-built and smallest holiday camp. At the time of its closure it was owned by Majestic Holidays and was sold for £2.25m to Vale of Glamorgan Council who demolished the camp and sold it to Bovis Homes for housing development.

1997 Despite him being instrumental in their overnight phenomenal international success, British group 'The Spice Girls' sacked their creator and manager Simon Fuller.

1998 Families of World War 1 soldiers executed for cowardice or desertion laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in the first ceremony of its kind to pay tribute to the 306 servicemen who died. 

2001 Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted that his global activity for the war on terrorism did not mean that domestic issues such as crime, health and education were neglected.

2012 Actor Clive Dunn, best known for his role as Lance Corporal Jones in Dad's Army, died aged 92.

2013 A report showed that the NHS spent nearly £700 on clinical negligence cover for every live birth in England - almost a fifth of all spending on maternity.

2014 Alan Knight, a fraudster from Swansea, who pretended to be quadriplegic for two years in an attempt to evade punishment for conning an elderly and vulnerable neighbour was jailed for four and a half years.

2016 The death (aged 95) of the veteran broadcaster Sir Jimmy Young. He spent almost three decades at BBC Radio 2 and was one of the original Radio 1 DJs when the station launched in 1967.