This was the week that was

Today On this day in 1982, Chariots of Fire raced ahead to win the Oscar for Best Film. Celebrating the 1924 Olympics, this was the best movie about a British 100-metre sprinter since the games started in the eighth century BC.

Tomorrow Oh what a wonderful evening on Broadway, when Oklahoma! opened in 1943, winning a Pulitzer Prize for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Its agreeable corn carries on being as high as an elephant's eye, not least in London's West End today.

Wednesday In 1967 Jimi Hendrix pushed back the boundaries of both music and firefighting techniques: he burnt his guitar for the first time on stage. By June he had bought another instrument, and extra lighter fuel, for an even more pyrotechnic display at the Monterey Festival.

Thursday Born in 1873, Sergei Rachmaninov composed piano music which, as seen in the film Shine, led to poor David Helfgott becoming a few notes short of the full keyboard.

Friday The painter and sculptor Max Ernst was born in 1891. Part of the importance of being Ernst was that he founded the Cologne branch of the Dada movement.

Saturday Outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back by his own gang member in 1882, but lived on in celluloid Heaven: Jesse James, The Return of Frank James, The True Story of Jesse James, The Long Riders

Impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte died in 1901, but his achievement echoed for decades afterwards in the Gilbert and Sullivan productions which his company copyrighted. He ploughed the operatic profits into London's Savoy Theatre in the Strand, the first public building ever to be lit by electricity.

Sunday A great day for British television; after 24 years Crossroads, the Midlands motel soap which had been reduced from showing five nights a week to four and then to three, finally came to a dead end in 1988.