1946 – Petula Clark made her UK television debut at the age of 13 appearing on the live variety programme series ‘Cabaret’, broadcast by BBC TV.
1962 – The Beatles played their first ever gig in Wales when they appeared at The Regent Dansette in Rhyl. Tickets cost five shillings.
1964 – The Animals went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘The House Of The Rising Sun.’ Recorded in one take, this was the first UK No.1 to have a playing time of more than four minutes.
1965 –Paul McCartney was presented with five Ivor Novello Awards at a lunch party at The Savoy, London. John Lennon refused to attend.
1980 – Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra had the UK No.1 single with ‘Xanadu’, taken from the film of the same name. It gave Olivia Newton-John her third UK No.1 single.
1981 – The Specials had their second and final UK No.1 single with ‘Ghost Town’. Despite being a song about Coventry, the band chose to film the video of themselves driving a Vauxhall Cresta around some empty London streets.
1985 – At 12.01 Status Quo started the Live Aid extravaganza, held between Wembley Stadium, London and The JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. The cream of the world’s biggest rock stars took part in the worldwide event, raising over £40million. TV pictures beamed to over 1.5bn people in 160 countries made it the biggest live broadcast ever known.
1988 – Michael Jackson arrived in the UK for his first ever-solo appearances. He performed a total of eight nights to 794,000 people.
1989 – Tom Jones lost a paternity suit and was ordered to pay $200 a week in child support to 27 year old Katherine Berkery of New York. The judge in the case was Judge Judy Sheindlin, who was still serving in her 15 year tenure as a New York Family Court judge before appearing in her court TV show, Judge Judy.
1991 –Bryan Adams went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Everything I Do I Do It For You’ which featured on the soundtrack for the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It stayed at No.1 for a record-breaking 16 weeks and won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture in 1992.
1997 – Walkers Spice Girl’s crisps went on sale in the UK, over 16 million bags were sold by the end of the year.
2000 – A statue erected in the memory of John Lennon was unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square. The sculpture featured a revolver with a knotted barrel created by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reutersward.
2002 – Fatboy Slim brought the Brighton area to a standstill when he threw a free beach party. Organizers had expected 60,000 fans to attend but over 250,000 turned up causing chaos on the roads with traffic jams over ten miles long.
2007 – Rod Stewart collected his CBE from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. The singer who was honoured for his services to music wore a skull and crossbones tie, white trousers and a stripy shirt instead of the conventional morning suit.
2018 – ‘November Rain’ by Guns N’ Roses became the first ’90s video to pass a billion views on YouTube. The next closest ’90s video was ‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries, at 739 million.
