1st September 1951: Britain's first supermarket opens

On this day in 1951 Britain's first supermarket opened on Streatham Hill (Co-Op and Sainsbury's had opened stores earlier, but neither would be recognised as a conventional supermarket). Premier Supermarket, owned by Express Dairies, was the brainchild of Patrick Galvini; Galvini had seen the concept of self-service stores whilst posted in the US with the Naval Information Service. Premier would expand to thirty-nine stores before being sold to Unilever's Mac Fisheries in 1964.

On this day in 1666 the Great Fire of London began when, shortly after midnight, a baker's shop on Pudding Lane owned by Thomas Farriner caught alight. Although the Lord Mayor of London Thomas Bloodworth remarked at the scene "a woman could piss it out", the fire would rage for four days. Eighty percent of the City was burnt to the ground, with thirteen-thousand houses, eighty-seven churches, and St Paul's Cathedral all destroyed. The official death toll from the fire was only six people, but it's more likely that hundreds perished.

On this day in 1960 Europe's first 'moving pavement' - or travelator - was opened at Bank Underground Station. A new, sloping tunnel was dug entirely by hand to lay the one-hundred yard long travelator - or Trav-O-Lator, as it was patented - linking the Waterloo & City Line platform with the station exit. The moving pavement reduced the time to leave Bank Station from an average ten minutes to only four, helping enormously with rush hour congestion.

On this day in 1829 the Metropolitan Police had their first officers out on the beat; as the force was founded by the Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, the officers became known as Bobbies or Peelers. Peel organised the police force along civilian rather than military lines to try and reassure the public that he wasn’t introducing an armed dictatorship: the officers therefore had blue uniforms rather than the army’s red; they were armed only with truncheons and rattles; they wore top hats; and with the exception of sergeant, the police’s ranks did not correspond with those in the armed forces.