On this day

1710: Thomas Augustine Arne, composer who wrote the masque Alfred, which included the song Rule Britannia, was born in London.

1836: Isabella Mary Mayson, who became Mrs Beeton of cookerybook fame, was born in London.

1890: Dancer Vaslav Nijinsky was born in Kiev.

1904: The first main-line electric train in the UK left Liverpool for Southport.

1941: The original incident used in Compton Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore occurred in the Hebrides when a cargo ship ran aground with her holds full of whisky. Islanders hid the quarter of a million bottles from customs officers.

1955: Jazz great Charlie “Bird” Parker died aged 35.

1969: Beatle Paul McCartney married photographer Linda Eastman, while George Harrison was arrested for illegal possession of cannabis.

1977: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said he would not allow a single inch of Arab land to remain under Israeli occupation.

1987: The government gave the go-ahead to the Sizewell B nuclear processing plant in Suffolk.

1992: Mauritius broke its links with the British Crown, becoming a fully-fledged republic but remaining a member of the Commonwealth.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Expedition operators on Mount Everest said Chinese mountaineering officials had banned spring climbs from their side of the mountain due to coronavirus fears.

Estate agency Savills has said the Covid-19 vaccination programme will dictate how property markets recover from the pandemic.

The group, which also advises commercial property investors, said it expects transactions to remain “broadly suppressed” in the first half of 2021 before improving across some individual markets with the “potential for progressive recovery” over the rest of 2021.

Its comments came as it reported pre-tax profits slumping to £83.2 million in 2020, down from £115.6m in 2019 after the pandemic hit commercial property investment.

Revenues fell 9%, with its transactional business seeing the biggest impact.

Paul and Linda McCartney got married in 1969.