Periodicals

The image presents two schematic diagrams of a dugout, labelled "Plan of Dug Out" and "Section A B." The top diagram is a top-down view showing the layout of the dugout, featuring rectangular sections with labelled areas. The entrance steps are on the right, leading to a larger central space with an emergency exit on the left. Arrows indicate the paths and functions within the space. The bottom diagram provides a cross-section view, illustrating the underground structure. It shows layers of earth and stones above the dugout, with a stairway leading down from the ground level. The dugout consists of various compartments, depicted with solid lines and labelled for dimensions.
1910s, Civil defence, Home Fires Burning, Periodicals, Pictures

Spooked

One of the fun things about historical research is finding something when you’re not looking for it. Alan Murdie, in his regular ‘Ghostwatch’ column in a recent Fortean Times, wrote the following: At Folkstone [sic], in 1917, candles in an air-raid shelter were mysteriously extinguished amid other poltergeist events. Natural gas from strata was blamed.1 […]

Thanet Advertiser, 29 April 1916, 5
1910s, Ephemera, Periodicals, Pictures, Rumours

Queer letters and alien hands

The above facsimile letter was published in the Ramsgate Thanet Advertiser on 29 April 1916. It reads: April 7th. The writer of the first ‘German messages’ has been absent from Ramsgate some time now, so the ‘Alien’s post-card’ is by another hand. If I did not fear prosecution for “failing to register an alien,” I

Croydon Airport booking hall, summer 1935
1930s, Civil aviation, Periodicals, Pictures

You wouldn’t read about it

Would you? It’s the summer of 1935.((Late July or early August 1935, judging from the August Popular Flying on display. I can’t quite make out the newspaper headlines but the themes (British troops? American naval policy?) could fit late July.)) You’re at Croydon Airport, waiting to board an Imperial Airways flight to Paris. But you

1910s, Art, Contemporary, Interviews, Maps, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures

15 minutes of relevance

‘In the future, every historian will be relevant for 15 minutes’, as somebody once said. Here’s my 15 minutes, an interview with journalist Connor Echols for Responsible Statecraft on the parallels between the 1913 phantom airship panic and the 2023 spy balloon panic. As I’ve been busy with other things and have had to watch

1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Australia, Before 1900, Periodicals, Pictures, Plots and tables, Tools and methods

Breaking the tyranny of distance revisited — II

One thing we were curious to try with hota-time is to see whether the idea and the code could be applied beyond looking at London-Sydney travel times. And it can! Here is the output for Melbourne-Sydney travel times, in hours rather than days: Lots of data points, roughly the same as for the London-Sydney plot.

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