TODAY: WEDNESDAY JULY 11, 2018

ON THIS DAY 78 YEARS AGO (1940)

We declared the RAF had downed 14 Luftwaffe planes on what has come to be regarded as the first day of the Battle of Britain. RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires fought off wave after wave of German fighters.

31 YEARS AGO (1987)

Veterans marked the 70th anniversary of the 1917 battle of Passchendaele in Belgium which claimed 500,000 lives.

136 YEARS AGO (1882)

The British Navy bombarded the Egyptian port of Alexandria to protect UK and French interests in the Suez Canal amid an uprising by Egyptian nationalists. The attack preceded a fullscale invasion of the country which remained under British rule until 1956. To find out how a young and unassuming Queen Victoria rose to be the head of the world’s greatest empire, tune into Young Victoria on Yesterday at 8pm.