On this day

1724: Highwayman Jack Sheppard was hanged in front of 200,000 people at Tyburn in London. 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.

Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits.