Today is Saturday, when a number of the weeklies in my sample are published. Two of them are clearly sceptical, and don’t devote much space to the mystery airships; one, from the heart of scareship country, is much more open-minded and has half a page of reports and analysis. This is the Norfolk News, which […]
After yesterday’s excitement, today is something of an anticlimax as far as scareships are concerned. In fact, it’s more like a backlash. There are some new sighting reports, from Wales again and from Birmingham. The Manchester Guardian reports (p. 7) that Oliver L. Jones, a Monmouth auctioneer (of Messrs. Nelmes, Poole, Jackson and Jones), his
The Globe has a slew of new reports from last night (p. 7), from Norwich, Wroxham, Sprowston, Catton and Tesburgh in East Anglia, Pontypool in Wales (by workers at a forge, an architect and two postal workers), and Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) in Ireland. Some saw searchlights, some heard a ‘whizzing’ sound, some saw a
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
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,
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] Airminded is hosting the next edition of the History Carnival on 1 June. Please send me suggestions for the best history blogging since 1 May, either by email (bholman at airminded dot org), by web (here or here) or by del.ici.ous (tagged historycarnival). Thanks! Image source: Weapons on the Wall.
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] A couple of years ago I outed myself as something of a philistine by admitting that I didn’t ‘get’ Guernica, and thought that direct representations — photographs — of the ruined city were more powerful, more affecting than Picasso’s masterpiece. My incomprehension generated a fair degree of discussion, which was useful, but
Noel Pemberton Billing has received a bit of criticism around here, and mostly for good reason. He couldn’t design a decent aeroplane for toffee, he peddled lurid conspiracy theories, he was a relentless self-promoter. But I don’t think he was a complete fool. He clearly had a fertile imagination (overly so, Maud Allen would have
The Tarrant Tabor, a prototype bomber designed and built in 1918-9. There were high hopes among strategic bombing advocates (including P. R. C. Groves) for this giant machine, but by the time it was ready for its maiden flight in May 1919, the war was over and its purpose now unclear. Not that this mattered
[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
