The Sun dated Wednesday September 6th 1972
Two editions of the Sun for the same day – two completely opposite stories. In the early edition the Israeli Olympic athletes that had been held hostage by 8 PLO gunmen were rescued by German police marksmen as the hostages were being transferred from helicopters to a Boeing 747. In the later edition the more accurate story emerges – the hostages were all killed by the gunmen as the German police failed to rescue them.
What I find interesting is how few words on the front page have been changed to tell the different story. And how the two politicians pictured in the early edition have been quickly written out of history now that they are no longer part of a successful rescue.
Of course even the late edition didn’t tell the whole truth. It turned out, according to various books and newspaper articles, that the rescue attempt was a farce. The police underestimated the number of gunmen, the police had no radios to communicate with one another, a group of police posing as airport workers unilaterally decided to just abandon the mission, two of the police snipers had no line of fire when the helicopters landed and were actually themselves in the line of fire of the other three snipers and so on.
I bet that you would be hard pressed to answer the question ‘When were the zig-zag lines either side of zebra crossing introduced?’ Well now, thanks to Holdthefrontpage, you can.
Idi Amin seized power in Uganda in 1971 promising democratic rule. One week later he declared himself President of Uganda, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Army Chief of Staff, and Chief of Air Staff. In August 1972 he declared that all Asians had to leave Uganda. 80,000 in all.
His erratic behaviour, including announcing he was ‘King of Scotland’, made him the butt of jokes and if you want a good laugh (albeit rather politically incorrect) at his expense try and find a copy of the audio recordings of John Bird as Idi Amin.
I just love the way the advertising agency for the Army have dropped ‘Northern Ireland’ into the middle of this list of ‘fun’ places to visit.
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