Only the Globe carries (p. 4) phantom airship stories today (out of my sample, at least), but it has two, and they head the column rather being buried down the page. The first is from Cardiff in Wales, where a number of dock workers saw an airship in the early hours of this morning, and […]
The phantom airship stories are starting to spread politically and geographically. So far only conservative newspapers have taken much interest in the ‘fly-by-night’, and so far it has only been seen in Norfolk and nearby areas. Both of these limitations make some sense: national defence is a particular concern of conservatives, and a single airship
For the first time, the Standard heads a column with the ‘midnight airship’ story today (p. 9). The story contains a brief summary of the sightings to date, along with a map of their locations. The first sighting was back on 23 March, made by a Peterborough police constable named Kettle. He saw a ‘strange,
The Standard again has an article (p. 8) on the ‘mysterious airship’, though this time the information is taken from today’s Daily Express. The Berlin correspondent of that paper has been making inquiries there, and reports that German expert opinion is unanimous in believing that the airship ascends from some German warship in the North
On page 9 of the London Standard today is a short article entitled ‘ELUSIVE AIRSHIP’. Evidently the story is not quite new, for it begins: The mystery of the elusive airship still continues to attract attention, and the belief is gaining ground that there is some foundation to the various reports. Obviously something has been
Starting tomorrow, I’m going to try some more post-blogging. It’s 100 years since the phantom airship wave of 1909, when mysterious aerial visitors appeared in the night skies over Britain. Or at least, stories about mysterious aerial visitors filled the newspapers of Britain. It’s hard to tell from this distance: the only evidence we have
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] A random thought while sitting in a lecture today: if there is (or can be) such a thing as total war, does that imply that total peace is a meaningful concept? Firstly, what is total war? One definition, drawn from the ubiquitous set of conference proceedings edited by Stig Förster et al
I’ve been reading a curious tome by Robert William Cole, called The Struggle for Empire. It’s curious because the empire of the title is the British Empire, or rather the Anglo-Saxon Empire, and the struggle takes place in interstellar space. And because it was published in 1900! It has a good claim to being the
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] Via Bad Astronomy comes news of an update to the Mars component of Google Earth. Most interesting to me are the overlays of historical maps of Mars from the 19th and 20th centuries, including those made by Giovanni Schiaparelli (1890), Percival Lowell (1896) and E. M. Antoniadi (1909). Schiaparelli and Lowell’s maps
Some more navel-gazingpost-thesis analysis. Above is a plot of the number of primary sources (1908-1941) I cite by date of publication. (Published sources only, excluding newspaper articles — of which there are a lot — and government documents. Also, it’s not just airpower stuff, though it mostly is.) I actually have no idea if it’s
