64 years ago (1959) We revealed Harold Macmillan’s Conservatives had won the general election, gaining 365 seats to Labour’s 258 and the Liberals’ six.
Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell said the party would have to do some “rethinking” and change its “presentation” rather than its message. Macmillan said the result showed that the “class war was obsolete”.
59 years ago (1964) The opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics was the first to be broadcast live across the globe by satellite. Some 93 nations competed in the Games – the first to be held in Asia – with athletes from East and West Germany part of the same team, as they had been in 1956. These were the last Olympics to use hand timing by stopwatch for official timing.
48 years ago (1975) Hollywood stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton secretly remarried in Botswana just 16 months after getting divorced.
The pair enjoyed a second honeymoon at the Chobe game park but their reunion didn’t last and they split again in 1976. The couple first wed in 1964 after meeting on the set of blockbuster Cleopatra.
