This post is about a revelation I had a while back, which those of you with a firmer grasp of the English language than I will think is nothing at all new (and you’re right!) The thing is that I’d always been puzzled by the word barrage. This gets used a lot by journalists: ‘the […]
The latest Fortean Times (June 2007) has a great article by Kim Newman on Hammer Films, the much-loved British horror film production company. While discussing the early 1970s, when Hammer’s fortunes were declining, he refers in passing to ‘the tragically unmade Zeppelin vs Pterodactyls‘. That’s all he said, but it was enough … could it
The other day I was wondering why Winston Churchill wanted the soon-to-be-blitzed British to bear themselves like the ‘brave men of Barcelona’, and not the equally brave men1 of Madrid or Chungking, which had also undergone heavy bombardments for long periods of time. I must admit I didn’t actually think it was ever likely that
… all those years of habitually talking like a pilot to the consternation of all and sundry, then somebody goes along and organises The First International Talk Like A Pilot Day and I go and miss it! It was yesterday, 19 May 2007. Wizard idea though, what — absolutely spiffing. Next year I’ll be there
The following quote is from Winston Churchill’s famous “their finest hour” speech, delivered in the House of Commons on 18 June 1940 (and repeated for radio that evening). It’s four days after the occupation of Paris: ‘the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin’. After assuring
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] The Nationalist version of Guernica — that it wasn’t bombed by fascist aircraft, but instead set alight by the Basque defenders themselves — was not widely accepted at the time, but for decades afterwards it was still plausible enough for some people to believe. As late as 1969, letters like
Found via Military History Carnival #2, an interesting post by Alan Baumler at Frog in a Well: China on airmindedness in China in the 1930s. If I had to compare it to another country, it would probably be Russia, where aviation was also part of a modernization effort. But something Alan mentions reminds me of
By the ever-brilliant XKCD. You know, not once in my entire time as a history student have I been given advice on how to deal with Godwin’s Law. Not even in a subject on comparative fascism! I think this is a clear example of academia failing to adapt to the new realities of the Internet
The A-bomb won: I wouldn’t have thought it was necessary to detonate a 19 kiloton nuclear weapon to see what it would do to an airship, but that’s just what the US Department of Energy did on 7 August 1957. Well, to be fair, the primary purpose was probably to test a prototype of the
I ordered these before I realised just how broke I’ll be after the UK trip. Oy vey … David Clarke and Andy Roberts. Flying Saucerers: A Social History of Ufology. Loughborough: Alternative Albion, 2007. A social history of British ufology, at any rate. Did you know that Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding believed that UFOs
