Rumours

1940s, Archives, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Rumours

The red balloon scare of 1940

I hadn’t come across this before. @ukwarcabinet recently linked to some informal notes of a War Cabinet meeting held on 8 February 1940. It was pretty quiet, even for the Bore War, and ‘Some of the subjects discussed were rather discussed by way of filling in time’. Including this: At the end of the Meeting […]

1900s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Post-blogging the 1909 scareships, Rumours

Saturday, 22 May 1909

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

1900s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Poetry, Post-blogging the 1909 scareships, Rumours

Friday, 21 May 1909

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

1900s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Plays, Post-blogging the 1909 scareships, Rumours

Saturday, 15 May 1909

The Standard again has an article (p. 8) on the ‘mysterious airship’, though this time the information is taken from today’s Daily Express. The Berlin correspondent of that paper has been making inquiries there, and reports that German expert opinion is unanimous in believing that the airship ascends from some German warship in the North

1900s, 1910s, Art, Before 1900, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Rumours

Mowing devils, old hags, and phantom airships

[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

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