{"id":8107,"date":"2021-12-05T10:07:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T09:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=193919"},"modified":"2021-12-05T10:26:08","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T09:26:08","slug":"5-december-on-this-day-in-history","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/5-december-on-this-day-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"5 December: On this day in history"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Dominic Sandbrook\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 05 December 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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5 December 1745: Bonnie Prince Charlie turns back at Derby<\/h3>\n

The pretender to the throne suffers a major blow<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When dawn broke over Derby on 5 December 1745, it found a city in shock. The day before, Charles Edward Stuart (also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie<\/a>) had marched into town. At a local inn, Charles\u2019s treasurer was already collecting taxes. Hundreds of miles to the south, London was reportedly in tumult. To the Young Pretender\u2019s Jacobite supporters, the restoration of the Stuart dynasty was now just a matter of time.<\/p>\n

Among Charles\u2019s generals, however, doubts had begun to set in. They were a long way from their native Scotland, and many English towns remained fearful and hostile. When Charles held a council of war that morning, his senior com- mander, Lord George Murray, told him that \u201cthey had marched into the heart of England ready to join with any party that would declare for him, that none had, and the Counties through which the Army had pass\u2019d had Seemed much more Enemies than friends to his Cause, that there was no French Landed in England, and that if there was any party in England for him, it was very odd that they had never so much as either sent him money or intelligence or the least advice what to do\u201d.<\/p>\n

Charles insisted that they must continue south. But even at that first meeting, he was losing ground. When they met again that evening, one Dudley\u00a0Bradstreet \u2013 actually a government agent \u2013 falsely reported that a Hanoverian army was blocking the road to London. That was the decisive moment. \u201cThat fellow will do me more harm than all the Elector\u2019s army,\u201d Charles murmured \u2013 rightly, as it turned out. He made one last effort to win over his generals. \u201cYou ruin, abandon and betray me if you do not march on,\u201d he begged. But it was no good. The next morning, they began the long march back to Scotland.<\/p>\n

5 December 1791: Mozart meets an untimely end<\/h3>\n

The composer dies before finishing his last masterpiece<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is one of the most famous scenes in musical history. The brilliant composer, perhaps the greatest who ever lived, sits huddled in a coach in Vienna, talking to his wife about his unfinished\u00a0Requiem<\/em>. He is writing it, he says tearfully, for himself. \u201cI feel definitely, that I will not last much longer; I am sure I have been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

As anyone who has seen the film\u00a0Amadeus<\/em>\u00a0knows, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on 5 December 1791 after months of agonising illness, carried off amid a raging storm. Or did he?<\/p>\n

In fact, most biographers believe Mozart was in good spirits before his death. The composer had indeed been ill, but he was feeling better and enjoying the challenge of writing his\u00a0Requiem<\/em>. The story that his rival, Antonio Salieri, had secretly commissioned it to drive him to his death is entirely false. So too is the myth that he died of syphilis. Probably he died of an infectious fever sweeping Vienna in the last weeks of 1791, the same disease that killed hundreds of others.<\/p>\n

Two days later, Mozart was buried in a pauper\u2019s grave. The gale howled, and all day, rain hammered down in the sepulchral darkness. The heavens themselves were weeping \u2013 or were they? Actually, contemporary accounts suggest it was a mild, misty day, with only a moderate wind. Even the pauper\u2019s grave is a fiction. Mozart was buried in an ordinary unmarked grave, like the overwhelming majority of middle-class Viennese.<\/p>\n

Julian Humphrys rounds up smaller anniversaries<\/h4>\n

5 December 1661<\/h6>\n

Birth of statesman Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford. As first lord of the Treasury between 1711 and 1714 Harley was, in effect, Queen Anne<\/a>\u2018s first minister but fell from favour following the accession of George I.<\/p>\n

5 December 1757<\/h6>\n

Frederick the Great of Prussia defeats the Austrians at Leuthen in Silesia.<\/p>\n

5 December 1830\u00a0<\/h6>\n

Birth of the poet Christina Georgina Rossetti in Charlotte Street, London. Author of In the Bleak Midwinter, the Christmas poem that was later set to music by Gustave Holst, Christina was the younger sister of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.<\/p>\n

5 December 1859<\/h6>\n

Birth in Southampton of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. As commander of the British Grand Fleet he directed operations at the battle of Jutland<\/a> in May 1916. In 1920 he was appointed governor general of New Zealand.<\/p>\n

5 December 1933<\/h6>\n

The ratification of the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution brings the national prohibition of alcohol to an end. Some states maintain their own temperance laws and Mississippi will not end Prohibition<\/a> until 1966.<\/p>\n

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5 December 1952: The Great Smog smothers London<\/h3>\n

Chaos reigns as the city is cloaked in impenetrable fog<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It began as just a curious weather story. The previous morning, reported\u00a0The Daily Telegraph<\/em>\u00a0on 6 December 1952, a \u201cthick fog covered almost the whole of south-west London\u201d, creating \u201calmost a complete blackout\u201d. So far it had claimed only one victim: \u201cA mallard, presumably blinded by the fog, crashed into Mr John Maclean as he was walking home in Ifield Road, Fulham. Both were slightly injured. Mr Maclean handed the bird to the RSPCA.\u201d<\/p>\n

So began the Great Smog of 1952. Like most major cities, the capital had suffered from air pollution for decades, but this was different. An anticyclone hung over London, trapping the soot and smoke released from the coal fires on which millions of people relied. This created a noxious smog that lasted for five days and killed between 4,000 and 12,000 people.<\/p>\n

At first there was no sense of panic. Londoners lived beneath a low-level smog anyway; why should this be worse? But by Monday the headlines were increasingly alarming. \u201cLondon\u2019s 40-Mile Fog Blackout,\u201d read the front page of\u00a0The Daily Telegraph<\/em>, warning that the smog had \u201cblacked out central London and a band 40 miles across\u2026 All buses had stopped by 10pm. Hundreds of cars were abandoned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flights were rerouted, concerts cancelled and ambulance services reported that routine journeys took five times longer than usual. At Liverpool Street station, a judge was so confused that he walked straight off the station platform. \u201cSome think well of frost or snow, and rain is an undoubted necessity,\u201d thundered one columnist. \u201cBut there is no decent use for fog\u2026 Fog is a dirty and stifling cloud without any silver lining at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only winners, in fact, were London\u2019s thieves, for whom the smog was a gift. But it did not last: by Tuesday the fog was clearing. And thanks to the Clean Air Act that came into effect four years later, it never returned on such a scale.<\/p>\n

Browse more On this day in history<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n