[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
I don’t have anything deep or moving to say about the bushfires which destroyed several towns on the north-east edge of Melbourne on Saturday (try here instead). Everyone I know is (I think) safe, which is the first thing to say, but beyond that … the official death toll is currently 181, but is sure
Via Modern Mechanix comes this supposed Japanese suicide bomb. It’s from the April 1933 issue of Modern Mechanix, an American magazine. It’s not an aeroplane but a precision guided munition, with the guidance supplied by the pilot inside the bomb itself. The accompanying article claims that Japan was using such bombs in China. Now, this
Source: Review of Reviews for Australasia, May 1913, 248 (link; presumably originally from a British publication).
An impression by “J.P.” of the R.A.F. attack by Whitleys on the snow-covered Skoda armament works at Plzen in Czechoslovakia on the night of October 27 [1940]. Source: Flight, 29 December 1940, 536 (link). Perhaps I’m just cynical, but I’m guessing that this night raid on the Skoda works was not nearly as accurate as
One of the things I love about the official history of the RFC and RAF in the First World War is all the maps — multi-panel fold-out jobs showing where bombs fell in London during the Gotha raids, or the Allied front in Macedonia. That’s not to mention the accompanying slip-cases stuffed full of more
