Random Ad - Picture Show's Valentino memorial (1926)

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An advert for the popular weekly film magazine Picture Show following the premature death of matinee idol Rudolph Valentino on August 23rd 1926.

Random Cutting - Cliff Thorburn wins Championship (1980)

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Canadian Cliff Thorburn beat Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins to win the Snooker World Championship in 1980, but lost to Steve Davis 3 years later despite getting the first maximum break of 147 in the World Championships.

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

The Mirror dated Wednesday January 29^th 1986

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The front and back covers of this edition of The Mirror (as the Daily Mirror called itself for a while) were unusual in that they were printed sideways.

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This was the 25 launch of the Space Shuttle since the first orbital flight in 1981 and the 10^th using Challenger. The special commission appointed Ronald Reagan to investigate the accident found that NASA management were to blame for not heeding scientists’ warnings that the component that failed would be at risk if the launch was made in the weather conditions that prevailed on January 28^th and that they had known of a potential fault with the component since 1977. A U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology investigation came to the same conclusions.

The Shuttle program was halted until September 1988 when the program was resumed. All went well until January 2003 when Columbia broke up on re-entry. The Space Shuttle program finally came to an end in July 2011.

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L Ron Hubbard died on January 24^th 1986 following a stroke. He had made a living as an author of pulp fiction in the 1930’s and 40’s but then developed Dianetics - a way of improving an individual’s physical and mental health. Later he went on to expand these ideas into Scientology. He has been called both a messiah and a pathological liar, but what can’t be denied is that he led a fascinating life and is well worth Google’ing.

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I like the comment ‘if he hadn’t been there he wouldn’t have got hurt’. I am surprised though that he got away with keeping an axe under his bed for just such an event.

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Anne Robinson (yes, the Weakest Link Anne Robinson) waxing lyrical about Prince Charles.

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I could imagine this happening in the 1950’s but in 1986 it’s unbelievable. Could there be more to the story than is printed here, or was the Landlord really that out of touch with the world of the 1980’s? 

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Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey, Bob Geldof and some other bloke. It says four stars but I say three stars and Phil Collins. 

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The Top 40 in all its variety. Number 3 should be ‘Walk of Life’. Number 39 is a version of one of my all time favourite Animals tracks ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ by a group even Google hasn’t heard of - Coltello Show Confederates.

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Palace intrigue just like in the olden days. Did Princess Anne really call Princess Dianna ‘the Dope’, or not? We commoners will never know. Or care.

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The usual pre-World Cup optimism. In fact England were pushed out of the Mexico World Cup in the quarter-finals by Argentina and more specifically by Diego Maradona and his ‘Hand of God’ goal. Argentina went on to win the tournament. Gary Lineker won the Golden Boot as the leading scorer.   

Random Ad - Christmas Rations (1946)

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The good news? We won the War. The bad news? Rationing goes on for another 9 years.

This a Ministry of Food information advert for Xmas 1946. Corned beef with a sprig of holly on top, anyone?

Random Cutting - Germany in the Melting Pot (1934)

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This article from July 1934 was written as a reaction to the Night of the Long Knives purge of June 30th to July 2nd in which the Nazi SS murdered at least 85 of Hilter's political enemies including his old comrade Ernst Röhm the head of the SA, and imprisoned many more.

I wonder if this is the same Shaw Desmond who founded the International Institute for Psychical Research.

The Crowning of George VI

Daily Mirror dated Thursday May 13^th 1937

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The King who shouldn’t have been. May 12^th 1937 was to have been the Coronation of Edward VIII but when George V eldest son chose marriage, to the divorcee Wallis Simpson, over the Crown, the succession passed to the second son - Albert, Duke of York. He became a surprisingly successful and popular King but ill health cut his reign short in 1952. 

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A possible question for ‘QI’ – how many Queen Elizabeth’s have we had? Allen Davis senses a trap and refuses to answer.

First time contestant Ami Childs buzzes in, “There was, like, Queen Elizabeth but that was, like, ages ago, you know, like Shakespeare and all that.”

Ross Noble bites the bullet. “Two”

Klaxon sounds.

Stephen Fry looks smug. “No. At least 3 and by some accounts 5. Queen Elizabeth 1 and 2 and GeorgeVI’s wife Elizabeth. Edward VI and Henry VII were also married to Elizabeths.”  

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Being of the peerage doesn’t make you immune to life’s troubles. Gustavus’ wife Joan died the following year and he was killed in action in France in 1940. The surviving son Gustavus Michael became the 10^th Viscount Boyne.

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£4000 is the equivalent of about £150,000 now. I thought the ‘take no responsibility for your actions and sue’ culture was something new.

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This 4 week long strike was protesting about conditions of work for London bus drivers and conductors, notably hours of work, rates of pay and a proposed speed-up of London buses. Failure to involve the Underground and Tram workers was blamed for the failure of the strike.

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Maureen O’Sullivan shot to fame as a very scantily clad Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan in ‘Tarzan the Ape Man’ in 1932. She went on to appear in another 50 or more films and to do a lot of TV work over the next 62 years. She died in 1998. 

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King Alfonso XIII left Spain in 1931 after the country had been proclaimed a Republic and his eldest son, also Alfonso, took the title Count of Covadonga.

In May 1937 the ex-King Alfonso severed relations with the Count, blaming him for making public assertions that he still considered himself legitimate heir to the Spanish Crown.

He married Marta Rocafort-Altuzarra in July 1937 but they were divorced in January 1938.

In September 1938 the Count was being driven home from a party in Miami when the car crashed. He died six hours later.

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Popeye had first appeared as a character in the American syndicated newspaper strip ‘Thimble Theatre’ in 1929 and this is his introduction to the UK newspaper print, although he had been seen over here in cartoon films.

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They certainly took their comic strips seriously in the 1930’s, and with the quality of ‘Jane’, ‘The Ruggles’, ‘Belinda Blue Eyes’, ‘Buck Ryan’ and ‘Gordon Fyfe’ I’m not surprised.

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For ‘candid camera pests' read ‘paparazzi’. New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia was re-elected and in fact held that office from 1934 until December 1945. William Griffin was all for keeping the US out of World War II and narrowly missed being put on trial for subversion in 1942.

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One definition of ‘to croon’ is ‘to sing popular songs in a soft, sentimental manner’. So a crooner is someone, usually a man, who croons. With the advent of the microphone it was no longer necessary from a singer to sing loudly or project his voice to be heard at the back of a theatre, so a quieter more intimate style of popular singing developed as epitomised by Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallie and Frank Sinatra.

Random Ad - The Pen that signed the Versailles Treaty (1919)

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An advert for the Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pen which the makers claim was the type used to sign the Peace Treaty at the end of the Great War. 

Why does it say 'Of Stationers and Jewellers Everywhere'? Surely it should be 'From Stationers etc'

Watermans claim to have invented the first practical fountain pen in 1884. 

Random Cutting - Hitler Forged Money in London (1949)

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During World War 2 the Germans tried to destabilize the British ecconomy by forging millions of £5 and £10 banknotes under the name Operation Bernard, but this item is about forged dollar bills using plates created by the official German mint.

Life on Mars – Official

Daily Mirror dated Wednesday August 7^th 1996

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With childhood memories of Dan Dare and radio’s ‘Journey into Space’ serials this headline was greeted with a smug ‘told you so’, but dreams are made to be shattered. It was soon disclosed that the rock sample in which evidence of life on Mars was found, had been contaminated here on Earth. But it still makes a great headline.

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Then as now. According to the BBC, Barclays Bank made £5.9 billions profit in 2012.

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Another pun headline that doesn’t quite work. Ok, so he’s a fork-lift driver but the phrase ‘forking out’ implies he’s making reluctant payments from his £1.4m lottery win. Or is it me?

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In July 1996 Caroline Dickinson was murdered while on a school trip to France. Having arrested and released Patrice Pade, the French police arrested another vagrant in 1998 but had to release him too. In 2001 a Spaniard, Francisco Montes, was arrested in Florida for breaking into a woman's apartment and a US Immigration officer connected him to the killing of Caroline. DNA tests proved positive and he was extradited to France. In 2004 he was convicted of the killing and got 30 years in prison.

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Newspapers do occasionally print apologies when they get things wrong, but like this one, it is likely to be 1 column inch at the bottom of page 14 and 9 months too late. I wonder if the writer of this piece will print an apology to his or her English teacher for not being able to spell ‘school’.

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Remember when the coming of computers in business was hailed as the arrival of the ‘paperless office’. It didn’t happen. Nor has the people-less office with everyone working from home as predicted here. With desktop PC’s, such as this one advertised on the same page, it’s not surprising. 

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What’s to say? Bob Morgan was a diver. He won a gold medal at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. He couldn’t afford to train properly for the Olympics despite representing the UK four times. "I coulda beena contender.."

Random Ad - Visit the Rhineland (1937)

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The "A Nation at Work.. Dusseldorf" exhibition dates this advert to 1937, the year Buchenwald Concentration camp was opened for business. 

Come to Cologne 'The gateway to German Culture'. That is German culture as defined by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. After the book burnings of 1933 the SA also purged the art galleries of 'decadent' works and no Concert Hall owner in his right mind would put on a performance of any music with a Jewish taint.

Bad Kreuznach is renowned for its radium spa. Nothing like a dose of radiation to get the blood circulating.

Random Cutting - O'Toole vs Tynan (1974)

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Film and stage actor Peter O'Toole and theatre critic and writer Kenneth Tynan both playing up to their 'bad boy' image. The film 'Rosebud' was one of O'Toole's lesser achievements. 

Old Bailey and Whitehall IRA bombings

Daily Mirror dated Friday March 9^th 1973

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In the first IRA mainland bombings since 1940, four car bombs were planted in London on March 8th. Two were defused, one in a car outside a Post Office in Broadway and the other outside the BBC's armed forces radio studio in Dean Stanley Street. However, the other two exploded, one near the Old Bailey and the other at the Ministry of Agriculture off Whitehall. As a result of the explosions one person was killed and almost 200 people were injured.

At the time I worked near the Old Bailey at the top of Ludgate Hill, directly opposite St Paul’s Cathedral. I had a habit of popping out mid-afternoon to buy a Mars bar and was crossing the old Paternoster piazza when there was a very loud boom that I felt as much as heard. As the crow flies I was only about 300m from the blast. Luckily there were a lot of buildings in the way.

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The people arrested at Heathrow included Marian and Dolours Price, Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and Roisin McNearney. In November 1973 all except McNearney, who had turned Queen’s evidence, were convicted of the Old Bailey and Whitehall bombings. 

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Rail chaos, miners' strikes, dock strikes, go-slows, walk outs - this was the hay-day of the militant unions, but they had no way of knowing that Margaret Thatcher’s reign was only 6 years away (give or take 4 or 5 days).

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The London School of Economics had been a hot-bed of student unrest since 1966 and this was yet another in a series of protests. 

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On March 5^th sixty-eight people had been killed when a Douglas DC-9, flying from Palma to London, collided in midair with a Convair 990 Coronado aircraft over Nantes in western France. The accident occurred during a French air traffic controller’s strike and stand-in military controllers were being used.

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The problem is whether to watch ‘The Virginian’ and then ‘Morcambe and Wise’ or ‘Hawaii Five-O’ and ‘On the Buses’? There’d be no hesitation in watching one of my favourite films though – Jean Luc Goddard’s ‘Alphaville’.

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Straight forward story – fan sends Paul McCartney seeds, he plants them, they come up as cannabis, police see them, he appears in court and is fined. I think there is a printing error though. McCartney is quoted as saying ‘there should be legislation on the use of cannabis’. Surely there was or he wouldn’t be in court.

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Fans got more than they bargained for when, in 2002, the iconic Wembley Stadium was demolished and a new stadium built on the site.