For a country so far from the frontline, there was a surprising amount of discussion in the New Zealand press in the autumn of 1918 about the possibility of Auckland being bombed or Wellington being shelled. It’s true that it was often framed in a joking fashion, as with the above cartoon which appeared in […]
In between conferencing and researching, I managed to fit in some sightseeing in Wellington. It really was only a day or two, and sometimes the weather was somewhat inclement, but I did see some of the main attractions. Above is a detail of the portico of the beautiful Wellington Railway Station, which opened in 1937.
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.] An interesting Flickr set of photographs evidently taken in the south of England in the last year of the Second World War was recently posted to a WWII mailing list I’m on. Many show aircraft of various types; others are of people and places. The photographer is unknown
The planet Venus normally sticks close to the Sun and so can only be seen very shortly after sunset, to the west (or before sunrise, to the east, when it is a morning star). But every 584 days, when it reaches maximum elongation in its orbit, it is far enough from the Sun in apparent
View Scareships, 1913 in a larger map Here’s where the 1913 phantom airship sightings took place. Actually, there are a few from late 1912 (including the Sheerness incident), the blue ones. Red indicates sightings in January 1913, green February, cyan March, and yellow April. A quick visual inspection shows that the density of sightings was
John Ptak recently pinned a 1964 science fiction magazine cover depicting a ruined Statue of Liberty, predating the more famous ending of Planet of the Apes by four years. He wondered about earlier images along the same lines, and after a bit of digging I found not many at all. The above is the only
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.] Today is Anzac Day, the anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli of Australian (and New Zealand, though my remarks here mostly pertain to my own country) troops on 25 April 1915. In the last two decades Anzac day has increasingly been seen as marking the coming of age
A rather belated mystery airship report appears in today’s Aberdeen Daily Journal (p. 4): It was reported a few days ago that on the evening of the 9th April [1913] an airship, steering north-west, was seen from the island of Stronsay, Orkney. Doubt was felt at the time as to the reliability of the report,
It’s been a while, but after three previous visits the mystery airship has returned to Cardiff. From the Manchester Guardian (p. 9; above): Our Cardiff correspondent sends a report that again last night [8 April 1913] an aircraft was seen at Cardiff, where one was reported to have been seen frequently at the beginning of
Z4 had only a brief stay in Lunéville. It has already flown back to Metz, though not before being searched by the authorities for any evidence that the Zeppelin had been photographing French defences. They didn’t find any, but did impose a £300 customs duty anyway (which will be refunded). Except in the frontier provinces,
