week in week out

Today The first annual marathon was held in Boston, Mass. in 1897, a 25-mile race guaranteed "free of professionalism, politics and plugs". In 1988, Radio China started to broadcast pop, anything from Madonna to Glenn Miller, but not "Roll Over Beethoven", deemed offensive to Ludwig.

Saturday The first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe, was published in 1841. The first motor race took place in 1887, in the streets of Paris; the winner was Georges Bouton in his four-seater steam quadricycle, largely because he was the only competitor.

Sunday Britain's first art exhibition, which included the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was held in the Strand in 1760; an attempt to keep out servants, soldiers and other undesirables failed and windows were broken by uneducated critics. In 1964, BBC2 showed its first programme, Playschool.

Monday PH Newby, Controller of the (then) Third Programme, won the first Booker Prize in 1969. Child prodigy Yehudi Menuhin, who gave his first violin recital at the age of six, was born in 1916.

Tuesday William Shakespeare was born in 1564, and died on the same day in 1616. Roy Orbison was born in 1936; he sang in the Dylan-Harrison Traveling Wilburys but died suddenly before the promotional video was made.

Wednesday The Edison Speaking Phonograph went into production in 1878; models were exhibited to paying customers, one of whom made the first known musical recording, of "Yankee Doodle", played on a cornet. Fiddlesticks, copyrighted in 1931, starred Flip the Frog: the first colour cartoon with sound.

Thursday Abner Peeler patented the airbrush in 1882; first used to put colour into black-and-white photos, it later became a way of painting out pubic hair and other "human imperfections". The tote, or "totalizator", invented by the son of the Archbishop of New Zealand, was first used for a British horse race in 1929. Mrs Dale's Diary, the radio serial which had lasted more than two decades, was phased out in 1969.