On this day
» 1724: Highwayman Jack Sheppard was hanged in front of 200,000 people at Tyburn.
» 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:
The Cambridge Dictionary revealed its word of the year for 2021 was ‘perseverance’, with editors crediting global interest in Nasa’s mission to Mars.