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
I’ve added another biography to the sidebar, that of devil-may-care flying fool Claude Grahame-White. He is probably most remembered today for his daring night flight in 1910 while attempting to win the Daily Mail London to Manchester prize. (His film career seems to have attracted somewhat less attention.) But for me Grahame-White’s main significance is
No. But let me explain … One of the nice things about tutoring is that you’re getting paid to learn things (unless you happen to know everything about whatever it is that you are tutoring already, which I don’t). And one thing I’ve learned recently is that the First World War started because French aircraft
Here’s an explanation for phantom airships which I haven’t come across before: whales! The way in which rumours start and grow is shown by the following incident recorded by the Daily Telegraph correspondent at Harwich:— “It was rumoured in Harwich this evening that a Zeppelin had been seen flying on the North Sea to-day, surrounded
A question about the phantom airship scares which has bothered me for a while is, how accurate are the press reports of people seeing something strange in the sky? That is, did people actually see something strange in the sky, or were the press reports made up or otherwise distorted? There is some evidence from
Last month I touched on the Hidden Hand, an alleged German conspiracy during the First World War, supposedly undermining the British war effort from within. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately!) my sources don’t include some of the more extreme publications pushing this conspiracy theory, but I have looked at the Daily Mail, which has published the
In contrast to the King’s message to the RAF, Flight‘s reaction to the end of the war, in the same issue of 14 November 1918, seems rather grumpy. It’s true that the editorial section is rounded off, on p. 1274 (source), by a short section which expresses a certain amount of glee at the news
The short answer is, almost certainly not, but more of that in a moment. One of the nice things about blogging is that people send me emails on topics which they think may interest me. Recently I received scans of a photograph from Peter Edwards, who has the original glass plates. They’re from a box
1908 was the year that aviation, and its possible consequences, burst into British consciousness. In July, the British press reported on a long-duration flight over Germany of the Zeppelin LZ4, which proved that controlled lighter than air flight was practical, and in August, on the flights in France of Wilbur Wright, which very publicly proved
