THIS WEEK

OCTOBER 15, 1815

During his previous exile on Elba, Napoleon had tried to kill himself, and later escaped, having heard his beloved Josephine was dead. After defeat at Waterloo, he was exiled to St Helena, not America as he had hoped. He moaned about his surroundings and the conditions, dictated his memoirs and eventually died there, in 1821.

OCTOBER 16, 1793

At the age of 37, Marie Antoinette, last Queen of France before the Revolution, was guillotined. Marie Tussaud made a death mask, before Marie Antoinette’s body was thrown into an unmarked grave.

OCTOBER 17, 1956

The Queen opened Sellafield, the first commercial nuclear power station. The original nuclear reactor site, Windscale, is currently being decommissioned.

OCTOBER 18, 1851

Moby Dick was first published as The Whale. The tale of Captain Ahab’s obsessive mission of revenge on the creature that bit off half his leg, it is one of the classics of literature, thrilling generation after generation. Like many a genius writer, author Herman Melville wasn’t as appreciated in his lifetime as he is now.

OCTOBER 19, 1973

US President Richard Nixon rejected an appeal to hand over the Watergate tapes. With the full force of the scandal upon him, he then tried to get various people to fire the special prosecutor, but they resigned rather than follow Nixon’s orders.