Punch today has a number of phantom airship items (p. 379). They’re quite amusing (to me, at least) and, in ironic vein, sum up the scare quite well. There’s pride … We are getting on at last. In phantom airships Great Britain is now facile princeps. … fear … Meanwhile, some surprise has been expressed […]
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] It’s just short of three years since I last hosted a History Carnival, so it’s about time I did another. And here it is! Herein you will find such diverse topics as: The Maltese dragon of 1608. Anti-vaccinators of the 18th and 19th centuries. The lives of disabled British children around the
The new Fortnightly Review (actually a monthly, of course) is out today. Each issue opens with a review of ‘Imperial and foreign affairs’, which is usually written by J. L. Garvin, editor of the Observer and a figure of great influence in Conservative politics. Assuming that it is he who penned this Review‘s review, Garvin
No scareships today. But the Standard carries a short article (p. 3) which shows how the airship menace could lie at the nexus of propaganda, advertising and entertainment. This summer’s weekly Brock’s Benefits, a free fireworks display produced by Brock’s Fireworks at the Crystal Palace, will present ‘a scene of an invasion drama of a
Last year I was interviewed by Dan Vergano, science reporter for USA Today, for an article he was writing for Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine on the 1909 phantom airship wave. It’s finally been published, in the July 2009 issue, and can also be read online. It’s a lively and engaging overview of the episode, and
This week’s issue of Flight carries a short piece about ‘Phantom airships and scare headlines’ (p. 318). It’s scornful of the credulity of ‘a certain section of the Press’, since ‘it was evident from the very first that either a practical joke was being played or that a bold advertising scheme was on foot’. The
The Duke of Bedford. Total Disarmament or an International Police Force? Glasgow: Strickland Press, 1944. Or false a dichotomy? Bedford was a pacifist and (maybe) a fascist. Here he is the author of a twelve-page pamphlet which originally sold for 2d. and which I bought for … much more than 2d.! If I’d known I
There was nothing about phantom airships in yesterday’s papers. Nor is there anything in today’s, for that matter. But there is a curious story in the Globe concerning the ‘Wokingham airship’ (p. 11): A mysterious and closely-locked shed near the large public school at Wokingham has for some time past given rise to rumours of
I started this PhD not far off four years ago. Yesterday I received my examiners’ reports, and they both recommended that I ‘be awarded the PhD degree without further examination or amendment’ (though not without criticism, I must add). So now all that remains for me to do is submit two permanent bound copies to
The mighty Punch weighs in on the phantom airships today. Above is a rather wonderful full-page cartoon by Bernard Partridge, playing on the notion that the stories are part of the annual ‘silly season’ (usually in summer, still a month away): The sea-serpent: “Well, if this sort of thing keeps on, it’ll mean a dull
