Daily Mirror dated Monday November 1st 1926
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Benito Mussolini was the leader of the Italian National Fascist Party and became Italy’s Prime Minister in 1922. His administration started out as a right-wing coalition but by the beginning of 1926 had become a dictatorship with him as supreme commander or Il Duce.
In this, the 5th attempted assassination, 15 year old Anteo Zamboni tried to shoot Mussolini but paid for it with his own life when he was lynched. (Trivia note – the man who identified Zamboni as the culprit was the father of film director Pier Paolo Pasolini.)
Despite his prediction (mentioned in the article) that he would not die a violent death, Mussolini was himself lynched and hung from a street lamp in April 1945.
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Note also the picture of Houdini on the front page. Harry Houdini was born in Hungary as Erik Weisz in 1874, moving to America with his family at the age of 4. He started in show business as a slight-of-hand magician but then concentrated on escapology. His act became World famous and he toured America and Europe. From 1918 to 1923 he had a second career as a film star. In the 1920s he used his experience in performing magic to expose as fraudsters psychics and mediums. I guess that the lack of space devoted to his death was due to the news coming in late the previous evening, and that more appeared in the next day's issue.
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Of all the people in all the bars in all the World to try to con why pick on the ex-welterweight champion of France and Europe; middleweight, light-heavyweight and heavyweight champion of Europe; not to mention "White Heavyweight Champion of the World"?
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Cheaper petrol - there's a novelty. 1s and 6d a gallon (7.5p) is the equivalent of 4d a litre – that’s less than 2p a litre! Using the National Archive currency converter 4d in 1926 is roughly the equivalent of 50p now, so, taking into account wages, RPI and the colour of magic, petrol has gone up by about 270%.
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The F8 camera first entered service in 1919 and was later adopted as the standard RAF camera. At first the camera was driven by a propeller connected to a flexible drive system, later this was replaced by an electric motor. Designed to use 9" wide film but to have a 7" X 7" image format, this allowed for instrument recording to be exposed along the side of the film. The 100 exposures were on a 65-foot long roll of celluloid film.
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I thought this was just an odd name for ‘sleeping sickness’ but according to Wikipedia -
Encephalitis lethargica or von Economo disease is an atypical form of encephalitis. Also known as "sleepy sickness" (different from the sleeping sickness transmitted by the tsetse fly), it was first described by the neurologist Constantin von Economo in 1917. The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless. Between 1915 and 1926 an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica spread around the world; no recurrence of the epidemic has since been reported, though isolated cases continue to occur.
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I wonder what Medicus would make of McDonalds?
A lot of interesting advice here but what pops out at me is the mention of ‘canary pudding’. Surely not. They wouldn’t would they?
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“By gad, Sir, never did me any harm being beaten at school. In fact quite enjoyed it, doncha know. Still go to a young lady round the back of Charring Cross Road… well.. hurrumph… that’s enough of that. More brandy, Jeeves.”
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