16 september

Afraid that Scott’s motor sledges would beat him, Amundsen started with eight men and 90 dogs while it was still late winter. The thermometer fell to about −55 °C; they dumped their loads at 80° and raced home strung out, the last pair eight hours behind the first. Next morning Hjalmar Johansen…

Thirty-four games, 25 of them drawn: Alexander Alekhine won six to Capablanca’s three. It stayed the longest title match until 1984, and the two never played a rematch.

An undeclared border war on the edge of Mongolia. In August Georgy Zhukov’s tanks encircled and destroyed the Japanese force. The defeat helped turn Japan’s ambitions south, towards the colonies of Southeast Asia, and away from the Soviet Union.

Japan forced Allied prisoners of war and Asian civilians to build about 415 kilometres of line through the jungle of Thailand and Burma. Of more than 60,000 prisoners, over 12,000 died. Of the Asian labourers, estimates run from about 75,000 (Australian War Memorial) to 90,000 (Anzac Portal) dead.

The Robe opens in CinemaScopeThe Robe

Hollywood’s answer to television was a picture television couldn’t show. Fox’s anamorphic lens squeezed a screen more than twice as wide as it was tall onto ordinary 35 mm film, and within a couple of years almost every studio was shooting wide.

“Rapper’s Delight”Rapper's Delight

Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records in Englewood, New Jersey, put together three unknown rappers as the Sugarhill Gang and had a studio band replay Chic’s “Good Times” under them for almost fifteen minutes. It reached No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100, the first rap record in the Top 40, and…

The oldest money market fund held 785 million dollars of Lehman paper. Its shares, meant always to be worth a dollar, were now worth 97 cents. Savers across the industry rushed for the exit, and the money funds stopped lending to companies.

The closest anyone came to El Guerrouj in twenty-four years: 0.60 seconds short, with Yared Nuguse 3:43.97 behind him.