On this date in 1955, two Egyptian Jews enrolled by Israeli intelligence as saboteurs were hanged in Cairo.

The strange and disturbing “Lavon affair” — or “Esek habish,” the “shameful affair” — has never had a completely satisfying explanation.

It broke in 1954, when Egypt arrested a ring comprised of Egyptian Jews who had bombed locations in Alexandria and Cairo, including an American diplomatic post, in an apparent false flag operation meant to be attributed to the radical Muslim Brotherhood. (The apparent operation had a recent precedent.)

The germ and the goal of this project have been fodder for speculation ever since; the most commonly accepted theory is that it was intended to trigger western intervention or pressure on Egypt that would prevent Nasser from nationalizing the Suez Canal.

Initially blamed on the Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, unrelated court testimony in 1960 would reveal that he was a fall guy.

But in any guise, the hangings this day in Cairo prompted national mourning in Israel and an immediate political shakeup whose dimensions might as well have sprung from this morning’s paper:

The dovish government of Moshe Sharett fell; hawkish founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was recalled from retirement in a Negev kibbutz; and Israel launched a reprisal raid at Gaza. Little more than two years later, Israel and Egypt would contest control of the Suez on the battlefield.

On this day..

• 1964: Nguyen Van Nhung, Diem executioner
• 1821: Henry Tobin, extortionist
• 1851: Ruben Dunbar, Destructiveness and Combativeness
• 1731: Alejo Calatayud, Mestizo
• 1550: Four Anabaptist martyrs at Lier
• 1679: Robert Foulkes, adulterous minister
• 1902: A day in the death penalty around the Pacific Northwest
• 1923: Eligiusz Niewiadomski, assassin-artist
• 1632: Aris Kindt, Rembrandt subject
• 1879: Takahashi Oden, dokufu and she-demon
• 1945: Private Eddie Slovik, the last American shot for desertion
• 1606: Guy Fawkes and other Gunpowder Plot conspirators