Kennedy is Shot (1968)

Adding labels seems to have moved this old post to the top of the blog and I can't see a way of returning it to its proper place, sorry.

Evening Standard dated Wednesday June 5th 1968

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Just after midnight Los Angeles time (Just after 9 am London time) on the 5th June 1968 a Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan Sirhan, shot and badly wounded New York Senator Robert Kennedy, the younger brother of the late President John F Kennedy who had been assassinated less than 5 years previous. The shooting took place in a kitchen corridor of the Ambassador Hotel when Kennedy was walking from a speaking engagement to a press conference.

The news came too late for the morning papers on the 5th and so appeared on the front of the London evening papers - The Star, the Evening News and the Evening Standard.

He died 26 hours later and so again the first reports were in the evening papers on the 6th.

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Back in the mundane world of the inside pages you may have been looking for a job. Note that the wages quoted are annual salaries.

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Or if you had a job this review of Cilla Black's first and only film, 'Work is a Four Letter Word', may have caught your eye

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New Orleans Ship Fire - 150 Die

The Manchester Guardian dated Saturday June 17th 1837

The Manchester Guardian founded in 1821 became the The Guardian in August 1959. This issue is about 20 inches by 27 inches and contains 4 pages of 8 columns of almost unbroken text. How on earth Sir Percy Thustgently, or whoever bought it, could read it by candlelight or oil-lamp, I don't know. It is hard enough using those wonderful new energy-saving electric light bulbs. Don't bother looking for the New Orleans story on this page - it is devoted to adverts, as was the case with most newspapers at the time.

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On page 2 we find the main story.  Googling '"Ben Sherrod" 1837' shows several sites that give detailed accounts of the disaster.  It seems that the steamship was racing another when the fire started, and it actually happened on May 7th but due to the lack of telephones, air travel, e-mail and the like, wasn't reported in England until over a month later.

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Aren't you glad I don't collect medical publications?

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Presumably they used the word 'cancer' to mean something different to what we know it as - or they lied in their advertising.

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The 1830's and 1840's were the great age of Railway building in Britain. The Manchester and Leeds Railway opened for business in 1839 and was incorporated into the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in 1847.

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Railway accidents were commonplace but it seems that you didn't even have to get on-board to risk life and limb.

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Those were the days when you could break a lad's jaw and only have to pay £2 for the privilege.

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For the connoisseurs of such things - the Tax Stamp from page 3.  From 1712 to 1855 every newspaper had to display a Tax Stamp.

Amelia Earhart in London

Daily Mirror dated Monday May 23rd 1932

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Amelia Earhart, the pioneering aviatrix, left Newfoundland early in the morning of the 20^th May 1932 in her single engine Lockheed Vega 5b and headed for Paris, France.  Nearly 15 hours later she landed in Northern Ireland and became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Her nickname Lady Lindy refers to her being a female version of Charles Lindbergh the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic 5 years earlier.

Earhart disappeared during her attempt to fly round the World with co-pilot Captain Noonan in 1937.

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Unfortunately freak weather and widespread flooding is nothing new.

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I include this bit about Bournemouth simply because I live close-by. Radio sets were very expensive during the 1920’s and Bournemouth, being populated by retired gentlefolk in their suburban villas, was a good market place for them.  So much so that it had its own BBC Station (6BM) from as early as October 1923. 

Why don’t these inconsiderate people use their MP3 players with just the soothing buzzing of the earphones to disturb the peace?

Ramsey Macdonald’s Labour Government were obviously having a difficult time trying to balance the budget. Presumably ‘balance’ meant getting some sort of parity between income and expenditure – not, as in these happy days, trying to reduce the country’s debt from a few billion pounds to just under a few billion pounds.

Prohibition or the ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, had been in effect in the USA since 1920 and was generally regarded as being a failed experiment, mainly because it led to the rise of the likes of Al Capone. By 1932 there was strong pressure to repeal the Volstead Act, which set down the rules for enforcing the ban.  The debate was being aired in Britain and this editorial shows which side the Mirror was on.

With gas prices going up and up, and, if you have a gas heated iron, this may be invaluable advice. Even if you haven't got one, standing a normal electric iron on a brick might win you the Turner Prize for Art.

John Lennon Shot

The Sun and Daily Mirror dated Wednesday 10th December 1980

John Winston Lennon, born in Liverpool, England in 1940, was a founding member of the pop group that dominated the 1960’s in the Western World.  The Beatles lasted from 1960 to 1969, after which Lennon had a solo career and moved to the USA where he became active in the Anti-Vietnam War movement as well as other Left Wing organizations – much to the annoyance of successive US Governments who tried to get him deported. 

He was shot outside the Dakota apartment building near Central Park in New York on the night of Monday 8^th December.  Due to the time difference between New York and London the Tuesday morning British papers did not feature the story.  The London evening papers did have it, but it was Wednesday morning before the national dailies featured the story.

Violet Carson was a singer and broadcaster that started in radio and the TV. She joined the cast of the soap Coronation Street as Ena Sharples when it started in 1960 and left in 1980. Despite her claim to return she never did and died in 1983

‘De Do Do De Da Da’ a  Christmas number 1? Wrong. After 3 successive number 1’s for The Police it peaked at number 5.  When I looked this up it seems that the title should read 'De Do Do Do De Da Da Da' and appears as such on a picture sleeve reproduced on Wikipedia.  Why am I wasting my life? 

Not quite always time – actually just a bit over 18 years.  In January 2009 all the British stores closed down.

A job in Libya?  What could go wrong?

100,000 'Steel Helmets' Goose-step in Berlin

The Daily Mirror dated Tuesday May 10th 1927

The Stahlhelm or Steel Helmet Nationalist movement was founded in Germany just after WWI by Franz Seldte, .During the 1920’s the Stahlhelm became increasingly anti-democratic and anti-republican and Seldte hoped that the organization could become a leading organ of a united right-wing movement. In 1931, he, together with Alfred Hugenberg and Adolf Hitler create the Harzburg Front, an alliance against the then current German Government.

He hoped to lead the Nazis into a government led by him, but soon realize that Hitler was the man of the moment and when, in 1933, Hitler came to power, Seldte joined as Reich Minister for Labour. Also at that time the Stahlhelm members were integrated into Ernst Röhm's Sturmabteilung (SA) militia.

He was captured and arrested at the end of the war but died in a US military hospital before being arraigned on charges.

Charles Nungesser was a French pilot and adventurer and a renowned ace in France, rating third highest in the country for air combat victories during World War I.

After the war, Nungesser mysteriously disappeared during an attempt to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, flying with wartime comrade François Coli. Their aircraft took off from Paris on 8 May 1927, was sighted once over Ireland, and then was never seen again.

Two weeks after Nungesser and Coli's attempt, Charles Lindbergh successfully made the journey, flying solo from New York to Paris in Spirit of St. Louis.

"I think you've had enough for your money"  Makes a change from the false ending where the artiste leaves the stage, waits for the applause to start to tail off, then bounds back on for an 'unexpected encore'.

"Well lass, that there wet stuff is the water and France is over yonder.  I would come with you but the Duck and Slug Ale House is expecting me for their Chef's Special eight course lunch. Don't forget to a send post-card."

Those were the days when everyone over the age of 10 smoked and the average life expectancy was about 60 years.  At those prices I'm not surprised.

Click on this and take a closer look. You are only a couple of answers and 84 years away from winning £100. I reckon 58 across is SOLO, 58 down should be SLY, and 63 across YEWS, but then 60 across is wrong!

If a man stood like this over a lady these days he'd be done for sexual harassment at the very least, and with a name like Rod La Rocque probably done for appearing in porn films as well.  Actually Rod made 104 quite legitimate films between 1914 and 1940.  The cast of 'Resurrection' includes one of Leo Tolstoy's sons, Count Ilya Tolstoy.

His Valet Found The King Dead

Daily Mirror dated Thursday February 7th 1952

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Born Albert Frederick Arthur George in 1895 he became King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth in 1936 until his death on 6^th February 1952.

As the second son of King George V, he was not expected to inherit the throne and spent his early life in the shadow of his elder brother, Edward, but when Edward abdicated in 1936 in order to marry, Albert ascended the throne as George VI. 

He was beset by health problems, including smoking related lung cancer, in the later years of his reign. He died from a coronary thrombosis in his sleep at Sandringham House in Norfolk, at the age of 56.  His daughter Elizabeth flew back to the UK from an official visit to Kenya as Elizabeth II. Because George died in his sleep during the night, his precise moment of death, and therefore Elizabeth's accession, is unknown.

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No silly comment - just an interesting picture.

No ladders in her stockings - now there's a sleuthing trick that not only Sherlock Holmes but also CSI's greatest minds have missed. 'He was trying merely to quieten her, in a way he had used successfully with her before' - I assume that was when he wasn't sticking red hot needles under her finger nails to stop her hic-cups.

How dreadfully sexist.

By gad, Sir!  What's the old Regiment coming to when a Major can't have some fun with his Privates without the Military Police getting involved.

I just hope that the hand belongs to the man's wife or girlfriend and not his senior Army Officer.  Who is this advert aimed at?  I wouldn't have thought that the typical 1950's macho-man would take well to be depicted in a 'pinny'.  The name 'Rhodian' brings to mind the famous girls' school so maybe the product was aimed at women.  Who knows?  Who cares?  I've got the washing up to do.