Hung parliament: What happened last time?

No party can now win an overall majority in 2010, which means one thing: Britain has its first hung parliament since 1974. The Tories have so far won 290 seats, 91 more than in 2005, but can not now reach the 326 needed to win outright. A similar scenario last played out in 1974. That year, Ted Heath's Conservatives only just secured more votes than Harold Wilson's Labour Party, but the latter won four more seats. Elsewhere, the Liberals had their best result for decades, winning nearly 20% of the total, but with only 14 MPs to show for it. The result set off a chain of events ...