23 december

He handed his commission back to Congress, then sitting in Annapolis, and rode home to Mount Vernon. A victorious general giving up power astonished Europe.

Proclaimed while European diplomats met in Istanbul over the Balkan crisis. The parliament it created met in March 1877; in February 1878 Abdülhamid suspended it for thirty years and exiled its author, Midhat Pasha.

A heavy old floe about a mile and a half from the wreck, about a mile square at first. Parties went back to the ship for wood, food and Frank Hurley’s photographic plates; he kept about 120 and smashed the rest so that he could not change his mind.

A second try at hauling the boats west, by night, when the surface was harder. In seven days they made seven and a half miles: at that rate, Shackleton reckoned, it would take over 300 days to reach land, and they had food for forty-two.

Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew Burt Rutan’s spindly Voyager around the world from Edwards and back in 9 days 3 minutes 44 seconds, the first flight around the world without landing or refuelling.