Everybody loves flying aircraft carriers — well, I do, anyway! Above is the closest the British got to the concept. In October 1926, the R33 (above) was used to carry and launch two Gloster Grebe fighters (below). These were relatively heavy aircraft, weighing over a ton each; earlier experiments had used only a single, lighter […]
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Nick at Mercurius Politicus has an excellent post up on the The Mowing-devil, an English pamphlet from 1678 which is famous among forteans because it contains an illustration of something that looks a lot like a crop circle, three centuries before the term was coined. If it is an account
A poster from the 1935 general election, showing, quite literally, the shadow of the bomber. The National Government was a coalition comprising the Conservatives and two splinter parties, National Labour and the Liberal Nationals. With Stanley Baldwin at its head, the National Government went to the people on a platform of peace and prosperity. The
Director Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge) has been working on a new film, called Australia. As the name perhaps suggests, it’s a sweeping saga of this wide, brown land of ours: the men who conquered it, the women who loved them, the cattle, the dust, the flies … well, it sounds pretty dull to
THE RAIDERS. A FLIGHT OF SEAPLANES SETTING OFF FOR A NIGHT BOMBING RAID. This one’s got me stumped. It shows a flight of RNAS twin-engined seaplane bombers, but I haven’t been able to find anything with the same profile. Any ideas? Image source: Harry Golding, ed., The Wonder Book of Aircraft for Boys and Girls
Via Old is the New New, MONIAC, the MOnetary National Income Automatic Computer: an analogue hydraulic computer designed by A. W. Phillips, a New Zealander, while a student at the LSE in 1949. The prototype was apparently built out of spare Lancaster parts. And there’s one on display at the University of Melbourne, otherwise known
An illuminated tram-car which is touring Blackpool as a recruiting agent for the A.R.P. services.1 Every autumn in Blackpool, the promenade is festooned with miles of multicoloured lights — the ‘Blackpool Illuminations‘. Part of this display involves similarly-decorated trams — the ‘Blackpool illuminated trams‘. (Or so I read, I’ve obviously never been.) This particular example
Via Museum of Hoaxes, the Nazi air marker hoax — though it seems to me that it was not a hoax in the sense of a deliberate attempt to deceive, but rather an honest misinterpretation. And taking into account the role of the press in the story’s rise and fall, it looks a lot like
A GIANT OF THE AIR. A HANDLEY-PAGE FOUR-ENGINED BIPLANE. A Handley Page V/1500, the Kabul bomber. Below is (I think) a S.E.5a. Image source: Harry Golding, ed., The Wonder Book of Aircraft for Boys and Girls (London: Ward, Lock & Co, 1919), frontispiece. Painting by Geoffrey Watson.
The last few hours of daylight of my last day in Rome were upon me. So, sadly, I couldn’t linger in the forum — there was still so much to see!
