On this day in 1946, the Royal Navy's last battleship, HMS Vanguard, was accepted for trials by the navy.

The ship was built at John Brown's in Clydebank. It was originally intended to be part of the Far Eastern Fleet fighting the Japanese but was not completed until after the war, and so became the only British battleship never to fire her guns in anger.

Today is the anniversary of the birth in 1710 of James Ferguson, the Scottish astronomer. Ferguson pioneered the popularisation of astronomy as a science through his internationally best-selling work, "Astronomy Explained on Sir Isaac Newton's Principles".

Today's recipe: Scottish chef Alan Murchison's cheese and pickle sandwich is a cut above the rest...