At the end of March 1918, the NSW Minister for Education, Augustus James, gave a speech at North Sydney Boys’ High School’s prize day. No doubt with an eye on the press, he spoke rather gloomily about the war situation, especially in light of the continuing German offensive on the Western Front: “We know to-day,” […]
While researching a possible British mystery aeroplane in 1936, which turned out to be nothing interesting, I came across a genuine mystery aeroplane scare which I’d never heard of before, from Australia and New Zealand in March and April 1918. I’m sure somebody else must have noticed it before now, as it was trivial to
This post should probably be called ‘Smugglers?’ but like many people I owe an intellectual debt to Enid Blyton. I’ve seen mentions of mystery aircraft in Britain in the 1930s but until now never a primary source reference. Thomas Bullard’s most interesting The Myth and Mystery of UFOs notes that ‘Mystery airplanes also appeared at
A belated Anzac Day post. Willunga is a small town in South Australia, not far south of Adelaide, not far from the coast. It was settled by Europeans in 1839, only a couple of years after the colony itself was established. It was a farming area, cattle mostly, and slate quarrying soon became an important
Over the years, I’ve written a number of posts about various phantom airship scares (which I take here to mean things seen in the sky which weren’t actually there). There are many more I might do in future, pending access to good sources (and maybe I’ll even get around to writing something for publication!) but
The Battle of Los Angeles took place on the night of 24 February 1942. It was more of a ‘battle’ than a battle: only one side did any shooting, and it’s not at all clear that there was a second side. The defenders of Los Angeles thought there was: they claimed they were shooting at
So, THATCamp Melbourne is over. It was pretty much as I expected, which is to say it was excellent. I’m not going to write a conference report (you should have been following #thatcamp on Twitter for that!) but two sessions did give me ideas for digital history projects I might like to do. One day.
Today I came across an article in an American publication, Science News Letter, dated 24 April 1943. The headline on page 269 reads ‘Gas Attacks Expected’. The opening paragraph reads: HITLER’S BOMBERS, if they make their expected raids on American cities, can be counted on to drop poison gases in bombs or sprays, Col. A.
Phantom airships come and go, but sometimes they come again. According to the scattered accounts of the 1909 Australian wave I’ve seen (meaning Bill Chalker’s The Oz Files and random internet sites), there was a late airship sighting on 25 October 1909 at Minderoo station in Western Australia. But I couldn’t find that event in
What did the phantom airships mean to people at the time? One thing is clear. The press very early on referred to the mysterious lights as airships, and it does seem that this was probably the most popular theory among those who saw them. But it was very far from a universal view. The 5
