Week in week out

Today Henley Regatta first took to the water in 1839, when the action was on the river rather than in the hospitality tents. Another Thames fixture, Jerome K Jerome, who wrote the classic Three Men in a Boat, laughed his last in 1927.

Saturday Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian who said his stories were better when translated into English than in the original, died 10 years ago. In 1993 a 24-year-old, raven-haired lifeguard became the first male winner against female opposition in a beauty contest; Miss Wintersun Queen, the Australian competition, was hurriedly renamed Wintersun Quest.

Sunday This is Bloomsday in Dublin, when Leopold Bloom wandered round the city; James Joyce set Ulysses on this date in 1904 because it was when he had met his future partner Nora Barnacle.

Monday The best TV cop show in 1994 was the live coverage of OJ Simpson driving over 60 miles of Californian freeway after not having murdered his wife. A 15-minute dialogue sequence made RCA's movie The Perfect Crime, released in 1928, the first with sound-on-film; previous talkies used (fairly) synchronised discs. Tuesday A 1928 closed-circuit shot of Jack Buchanan, in white flannels on the roof of the studio in Covent Garden, was the first exterior TV picture. England captain Douglas Jardine died in 1958; his Bodyline bowling tour of Australia was simply not cricket, more GBH.

Wednesday Baseball has scored a century and a half: Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey saw the first official match in 1846. Believing in fairies worked for Tinkerbell but not, alas, for the author of Peter Pan: RIP JM Barrie, 1937.

Thursday In 1887, Queen Victoria was much amused when, at the Royal Command performance to celebrate her Golden Jubilee, four kings of Europe climbed aboard the Deadwood stagecoach driven by "Buffalo Bill" Cody (Where to, Sire?). In 1970 David Kunst strode off from Wanseca, Minnesota; although he was back in the suspiciously short time of three months and two weeks, he had pulled off the first verified round-the-world walk.