ON THIS DAY
1724: Highwayman Jack Sheppard was hanged in front of 200,000 people at Tyburn. 1824: Explorers Hamilton Hume and William H Hovell discovered Australia’s Murray River. 1869: The formal opening of the Suez Canal took place. It had taken 10 years to make the 100-mile canal devised by Ferdinand de Lesseps. 1896: Oswald Mosley, English Fascist leader, was born. 1920: The Bolsheviks defeated the White Russians in the Crimea, ending Russia’s Civil War. 1937: MPs voted in favour of air raid shelters being erected in towns and cities. Winston Churchill insisted they were “indispensable”. Labour opposed this, fearing it would mean a big rise in rates. 1959: The Sound Of Music, a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, opened on Broadway. 1960: Clark Gable, the “King of Hollywood” and Oscar winner, died after shooting the final scenes of The Misfits opposite Marilyn Monroe. 1989: A pillar of South African apartheid crumbled when beach access restrictions were removed by president FW de Klerk. ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Theresa May refused to say whether talks took place over a peerage for Ukip’s Nigel Farage. BIRTHDAYS: Willie Carson, former jockey, 75; Marg Helgenberger, actress, 59; Frank Bruno, former boxer, 56; Steve Bould, coach and former Arsenal footballer, 55; Diana Krall, singer and pianist, 53; Paul Scholes, former footballer, 43; Danny Wallace, actor, filmmaker and writer, 41; Maggie Gyllenhaal, actress, 40.