Sunday 18 March 2012

Alcock and Brown Win Atlantic Prize

Daily Mail dated Monday June 16th 1919
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A back page rather than a front this time because the front is all adverts. This is the real news of the day. Flyers Alcock and Brown complete the first non-stop Atlantic crossing.

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The Viscount Northcliffe owned Daily Mail put up the prize of £10,000, which would be the equivalent of around £1,400,000 today
Captain Alcock didn’t live very long to spend the money; he was killed in a plane crash in December 1919.  A W Brown, on the other hand, lived until 1948.

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If you have ever moaned about the leg-room, food or anything else on a transatlantic flight try reading this account of Alcock and Brown’s experiences.

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This reads like something from a John Buchan novel but the real story was that IRA member Seán Hogan, was arrested on 12th May 1919 and was being moved by train to Cork when 8 IRA gunmen attacked the train at Knocklong and rescued Hogan.

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So 3000 people gathered and attacked a coffee shop, did extensive damage to the property and tried to lynch a ’negro’. So of course the Arab shop owner was charged with ‘allowing his premises to be conducted in a disorderly manner’.
See the post ‘A Week in April 1919’ for the Liverpool riot.

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Miss Chrissie White’s career of 186 films lasted from 1908 to 1933. She married her co-star Mr Henry Edwards and died in 1989 at the age of 94. 

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On the other hand the IMDB list only 3 films for Garrick Aitken, all made in 1919. Alas his leading part at 3 is lost in the mists of time.

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The R34 airship made her first flight on the 14th March 1919. The trip written about here lasted from the 17th to 20th June, and was followed, in July, by a transatlantic crossing taking 108 hours. I wonder if the in flight movies were ‘The Birth of a Nation’ followed by ‘Intolerance’? (they were both very long)
In 1921 she was written off after a forced landing in bad weather.

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Well I’ll be…  As a life long non-smoker I suppose this is why my subconscious interests are always well and truly suppressed.

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“By Gad, Sir… I betcha didn’t know I was a male model in me salad days, what!  That’s me on the right looking a proper prannie. Still it paid for the odd snort of cocaine, doncha know!”

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That’s a journey of 25 miles from just east of Guilford to Putney Bridge and it’s not the number of cars and motorbikes that amaze me, it’s the 217 bicycles he saw.  I wonder if they were all riding on the pavements.


Interesting arguments from J S Redmayne -
‘Nature never intended it’ – nor for men to fly (try telling that to Messrs Alcock and Brown)
‘great men and women spring from large families’ – ever heard of Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Franklin D Roosevelt, Hans Christian Andersen; all sibling-less children
‘nations that practice birth control decline’ – all nations decline over time. Ask the Greeks.

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A very good friend’s mother once told me that her father drove a Foden Steam Lorry in the 1920’s on a regular run from London to Nottingham and back.  It took 3 days each way.

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This is an advert for the British Heavyweight Boxing Championship bout between the current holder (since 26th May 1919) Percy Goddard and Joe Beckett.  Beckett won the bout and held the title until 1923, when Goddard regained it and held it until 1926.

Beckett had originally taken the title off Bombadier Billy Wells who, for those old enough to remember, was the man who banged the giant gong at the beginning of all the J Arthur Rank films.   

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I am aware of cooking temperatures in the form of ‘Gas Mark 5’ and ‘200 degrees Centigrade’, but ‘a good clear fire’ is a new one on me.  Who was this recipe written for – cavemen?






























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