hello Richard_Peck, i fear it won't be possible to restore those entries unfortunately. downloads & history aren't considered as valuable as your bookmarks, so firefox won't create automated backups of them. only if you have a manual backup of your profile folder or the whole hard-disk available it would be possible to get back the download history...

Dear PPhilipp,

I did send you an email in appreciation almost directly after your comments. Unfortunately, it seems not to have arrived with you and the Outlook postman has returned it to me, undelivered. I am so sorry as I was so grateful for your immediate reply - even if the news was not good. I did suggest that perhaps Firefox should make it a little more difficult for old aged idiots like me to so easily clear the Downloads box, when one was wishing to clear just one entry - perhaps a second-chance system could be adopted. Anyway, very, very many thanks for your immediate help. I remain with best wishes to you, Yours Richard

You can try to restore a previous version of the places.sqlite file.

• Right-click: Properties > Previous Versions

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Previous-versions-of-files-frequently-asked-questions