Blogging 200 years of history from 1785-1985
« March 2009 |
Main
| May 2009 »
James Drudge, that is, not the more famous Matt.
An unfortunate watchman, looking out for highwaymen on the Greenwich Road in 1824, James managed to shoot himself in the leg while signing off from his overnight shift:
The injury was occasioned by a loaded pistol he was drawing from his pocket, the lock of which becoming entangled with the folds of his coat, occasioned it to explode, and several slugs with which it was loaded penetrated the fleshy part of the left thigh nearest to the groin
Just the sort of thing that could happen to anyone. You can read the report here.
Also in the Archive blog: The great London beer flood
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Check out the Archive homepage or subscribe here
 In his outright condemnation of torture last night (yes!), President Obama invoked the example of Churchill and the Blitz:
“when London was being bombed to smithereens”, he pointed out that Winston Churchill had refused to allow torture of 200 German detainees because to have done so would have corroded “the character of a country”.
But where did that Churchill connection come from? The President cited an article he'd read,
"talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees, and Churchill said, 'We don't torture,'".
Huffington Post today - Is Obama reading Andrew Sullivan? - points to an article by the Sunday Times columnist from last Thursday - Churchill vs Cheney -
"As Britain's very survival hung in the balance, as women and children were being killed on a daily basis and London turned into rubble, Churchill nonetheless knew that embracing torture was the equivalent of surrender to the barbarism he was fighting."
And who was Sullivan quoting? See Ben Macintyre's article in The Times on Tin Eye Stephens, the commander of the wartime spy prison and interrogation centre codenamed Camp 020. Was it a coincidence that Ben returned to this character in the article he wrote on torture on the same day as Sullivan's?
Also in the Archive blog: Waterboarding was a war crime in WW2. What's changed?
"Humane" waterboarding: a lesson from France
Islington baker boy killed in the Blitz
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Check out the Archive homepage or subscribe here
View Larger Map
It's been reported today that some copses of trees on Salisbury Plain near Stonehenge have been identified for visitors by the National Trust as representing Nelson's Fleet at the Battle of the Nile.
Apparently Nelson's mistress, Emma Hamilton, persuaded a local lord to plant the trees in the positions they held at the height of the battle. National Trust officials compared charts of the battle with satellite pictures and found an exact match.
News of Nelson's great victory was phenomenally slow to reach London, and The Times had printed several unconfirmed reports before the official account was finally released on October 3.
Nelson had lost an arm and an eye in the battle, but was apparently able to write his own report, underplaying his own injuries and commending the behaviour of the captains of his fleet.
I was wounded in the head, and obliged to be carried off the deck, but the service suffered no loss by that event.
The fact that Nelson's letters were carried back, overland, by the Hon Captain Capel, "lately made Master and Commander into the Mutine cutter", only adds to the wonderful Patrick O'Brian tone of the reports, which carry the full lists of killed and wounded, and the lines of battle of the British and French fleets.
And in among all the excitement when the news did land, it's great to see a tremendous firework show being advertised on October 4, under the title, Nelson's Triumph; or Buonaparte in the Dumps. The entertainment, to be held at the Amphitheatre of Arts, Westminster Bridge, consisted "of song, dance and pantomime; a view of the Egyptian Country, and also a view of the two Fleets in real action, off the mouth of the Nile, etc, etc".
 ... from the advertising archive (and just in case of any misunderstanding, all these promises of prevention and cure date from before the days of the Advertising Standards Authority). Click on the links to see the original ads.
Straightforward scare tactics
An Influenza epidemic is at hand - an epidemic which Doctors predict will be exceptionally severe. From various parts of the country come reports that influenza is actually raging at the present time and is spreading with alarming rapidity from one person to another
Electric shock?
The Thermega electro-radiant blanket is a new device which airs, dries and warms a bed completely and without any danger whatever of overheating or other electrical accident. IT CANNOT GO WRONG.
Wartime shortage: an apology
In view of the immense value of Bovril during an Influenza epidemic, the proprietors of Bovril are making every effort to meet the demand. The shortage of bottles is seriously hampering the endeavours to increase the supply, and it is hoped that men will now be released for the bottle factories.
Sweat it out
When you can't throw off colds or Influenza - take a Mustard Bath as hot as you can stand it
And another mustard one, just because they’re so good:
Ever since the Baron de Beef left his Influenza in a Mustard Bath the bathrooms of England have been besieged
Keep your strength up
It will be apparent that a strong, healthy person will escape contagion when the ill-nourished one will fall a victim, consequently, one's aim must be the maintenance of strength
Some things never change: just do as you're told
Don’t worry about influenza, drink Ovaltine
Burn baby burn
Flame the great purifier. Sterilise the air of your bed and living rooms with our incandescent gas burners
A healthy stimulant for teetotallers? Hmmm
Sir, I have much pleasure in testifying to the efficacy of your Coca Wine. It is undeniably a healthy stimulant and a nerve tonic, especially beneficial to one who, like myself, is abstaining from intoxicants
Scientifically proved, oh yeah
It takes less than three minutes for MILTON to knock out the Influenza germ. We have overwhelming proof of this fact
Watch out, the bishop's been on the magic mints again
Fig. 3 shows the total destruction of Influenza germs on a plate treated with saliva from a person who had sucked five Formamint Tablets. The Bishop of Bath and Wells writes: The value of Wulfing’s Formamint as a preventive is appreciated in this house
Fair enough
Remember, Influenza is about. Treat what may seem to be "Only a Chill, or Cold" with suspicion – and Thermogene
Heaven knows what’s in this stuff
Miss Elizabeth Hyde, the well-known Concert Singer, writes: "I firmly believe that during the recent influenza epidemic, my immunity from that dread complaint was due entirely to Phosferine.” Two drops, night and morning, tend to brace up the whole system … It is also invaluable to women beset with household worries and family cares.
Aha! An honest one at last
The real nature of influenza is still very little understood. Every doctor will tell you that. The most that science can do, therefore, at present, is to treat the symptoms
That’s the spirit; I'll have a pint
Hall's Wine keeps Influenza off by enriching the blood, toning the nerves and rebuilding the body generally; it gives you confidence in your powers of resistance, strengthens the weak and maintains health in the strong.
And finally, the ultimate yuck factor
Telephone message received Nov 30, 1916, by Glaxo, from a Doctor. "Did you know that the influenza epidemic this year is affecting the stomach, preventing the patients retaining nourishment? I find my patients can assimilate your Glaxo, due, I suppose, to its flocculent curd.* You ought to make this widely known at once."
Also in the Archive blog: Ten ways to cut costs in the home
Wartime hints on how to be thrifty
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Check out the Archive homepage or subscribe here
 This just proves that you can turn more or less anything to make your point if you want to.
A disgruntled Brit living in Atlanta, Georgia, wrote to The Times shortly after Margaret Mitchell was killed in a traffic accident in 1949. Felix Walter's beef was against US film distributors, who were discriminating against non-American films so that they couldn't get a showing except in out-of-the-way, independent cinemas.
Of course, the adventurous soul who really insists on seeing "foreign" films can make his way to the Peachtree Arts Theatre, a small cinema with no parking facilities and a good mile away from theatreland. but the cult has its risks. It was while on her way to see a screening of Red Shoes at this cinema that Margaret Mitchell of Gone With the Wind fame was cut down by an automobile and killed.
So the most successful author of the day was a victim of US protectionism. While he was about it Felix had another axe to grind.
Censorship constitutes a further hazard. That amusing film Kind Hearts and Coronets was, I understand. banned entirely in this country on the ground that it takes too light-hearted a view of homicide. Whisky Galore had to be renamed Tight Little Isle to avoid giving offence to the prohibitionists, and there are other examples of "hanky-panky."
How can British films make money in the United States in these conditions? They cannot.
Also in the Archive blog: Red Baron shot down! WWI's most famous air ace killed
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Check out the Archive homepage or subscribe here
 In his new book, Cold Meat and How To Disguise It, Hunter Davies says that to survive in these straitened times we should follow the household economies of the Edwardians.
When war broke out in 1914, The Times was swamped with letters from readers either asking for or offering advice on what civilians could do to help. The letters were compiled into a series titled "How to be useful in wartime". Many of the suggestions - like don't starve your servants - seem ridiculous now, but there's a lot in there that could be worth a look.
How to be useful in wartime: practical patriotism
We are receiving a constant stream of letters containing suggestions for personal conduct or useful action in the national emergency. We publish a selection below.
They vary, no doubt, in value. But they all reflect the intense interest and desire to help which animates the whole population, and they will, we hope, encourage the spirit of duty, unselfishness, restraint, and consideration for others which it behoves us all to cherish to the utmost.
First and foremost, keep your heads. Be calm. Go about your ordinary business quietly and soberly. Do not indulge in excitement or foolish demonstrations.
Secondly, think of others more than you are wont to do. Think of your duty to your neighbour. Think of the common weal.
Try to contribute your share by doing your duty in your own place and your own sphere. Be abstemious and economical. Avoid waste.
Do not store goods and create an artificial scarcity to the hurt of others. Remember that it is an act of mean and selfish cowardice.
Do not hoard gold. Let it circulate. Try to make things easier, not more difficult.
Remember those who are worse off than yourself. Pay punctually what you owe, especially to your poorest creditors, such as washerwomen and charwomen.
If you are an employer think of your employed. Give them work and wages as long as you can, and work short time rather than close down.
If you are employed remember the difficulties of your employer. Instead of dwelling on your own privations think of the infinitely worse state of those who live at the seat of war and are not only thrown out of work but deprived of all they possess.
Do what you can to cheer and encourage our soldiers. Gladly help any organization for their comfort and welfare. Explain to the young and the ignorant what war is, and why we have been forced to wage it.
Futher wisdom in these:
How to be useful in wartime: hints for housewives: Do not starve your family or your servants. Everyone needs all the strength possible. Give plenty of food, but plain
How to be useful in wartime: patriotic women: The richer in the country should give seeds of turnips, winter onions, etc, to their poorer neighbours
How to be useful in wartime: aids to economy in food: Mistresses and above all cooks should learn the important place dripping takes in military cooking
Also in the Archive blog:
Ten ways to cut costs in the home
Death by plum pudding - Christmas Day in the workhouse
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Check out the Archive homepage or subscribe here
Seems that Ronnie Biggs may be about to be released on parole after serving only a third of the 30-year sentence he was given in 1964 for the Great Train Robbery (he spent the rest of the time on the run in Brazil).
Did the train robbers deserve their long sentences? Why not check out the original news reports in this Great Trail Robbery topic page - which tells the whole story of the robbery as it appeared in the pages of The Times as events unrolled - and post your comments here.
Daniel Finkelstein says releasing Biggs is not about justice - it's about mercy, in Comment Central.
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Check out the Archive homepage or subscribe here
 Haven't noticed Andrew Motion coughing anything up for St George's Day, so here's what the Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, "with a quiet and rather tremulous delivery", read to the assembled in Southwark Cathedral 100 years ago, at a service to commemorate Shakespeare's birth:
Gravest and yet most cheerful among men,
'Twas fitting that his lIfe should dawn in spring,
When merle and mavis carol in the glen,
E'en as to-day they sing ...
etc, you can read the whole thing here if you want.
Who are Merle and Mavis?
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Subscribe here
 The Times, April 23, 1918:
Yesterday's official German comnmunique announced that "Cavalry Captain Freiherr von Richthofen, at the head of his trusty 11th Pursuit Flight, has gained his 79th and 80th victories in the air." Before that had been published Richthofen was dead.
You can read the original report of the Red Baron's death and The Times obituary here. The obit ends:
During my whole life," Richthofen wrote, "I have not found a happier hunting ground than in the course of the Somme battle." And it was on this battle ground that he fought his last fight.
Also in the Archive blog: An incredible man in a flying machine
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Visit the Archive homepage to find out more, or Subscribe here
 If you weren't listening to the Today programme on the BBC this morning, do click on this link to hear the hilarious clip of commentary on the royal review of the fleet at Spithead in 1937. The boats were obviously not the only thing that were lit up.
The broadcast had been puffed for weeks in advance, presumably the first of its kind. The following day, this small news item appeared in The Times:
BROADCAST CURTAILED
The BBC's broadcast description of the Fleet illuminations at Spithead last night was faded out after four minutes, although 15 minutes had been allotted to it in the programme. After a short interval an announcer stated that that was the end of the commentary, and that the programme would continue with dance music. The following statement was issued bv the BBC just before midnight: The BBC regrets that the commentary was unsatisfactory and for that reason it was curtailed.
And a week later:
The Naval Review Broadcast: official announcement by the BBC
At the end of the Third News bulletin broadcast by the BBC last night the announcer said: "That is the end of the news. But there is one point on which the BBC feels that it owes an explanation - and an apology - to listeners. A full report of the circumstances in which a broadcast by a member of its staff from the Naval Review at Spithead was cut short a week ago this evening has been carefully considered. Action has been taken upon it, and arrangements have been made for the commnentator to be transferred, on his return from a short period of sick leave, to duties which for a time will not involve his speaking at the microphone."
Oh dear. Mine's a pink gin.
For a full review of the Review in all its glory, and a wonderful graphic map, have a look at this.
Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Subscribe here
 This lovely picture of the Notificator machine that's been doing the rounds on Twitter, thanks to Stanley Tang, shows a robot messenger which featured in The Times (London) on September 9, 1932. You can read about it here in full, but here's an extract:
... the inventor of this device, which was provisionally patented last June, is Mr Govan Gee, of Winchmore Hill. He has named the invention "The Notificator."
He describes it as an automatic machine with a small desk or shelf, having a glass window in the desk and a roll of paper or thin cardboard beneath. By the insertion of two pennies the window can be slid aside and a message written, which will then be turned onward, the window being closed ready for the next user. Each time a fresh message is written the shutting of the window will move a ratchet - the only mechanism embodied in the invention - and so place the column of messages one space higher.
Messages will remain in sight for some time - the machine is sufficiently tall to leave them visible through a glass panel for at least two hours, it is calculated. The only attention the apparatus will require is the periodical changing of the roll of paper.
The background is that Times readers had been writing to complain about the difficulty of meeting friends in major railway stations - you couldn't say "Meet you under the clock" when there were clocks all over the place.
First Mrs Ruth Fry, of Kensington, suggested stations should have an official "meeting place". Mr Storr Best of Beckenham wrote back to say that a message system - a manual version of the Notificator - had existed at Charing Cross 32 years before. Then helpful suggestions came in from readers who'd been to Japan, where the kokuchiban was another manual version. Even the London representative of the Japanese railway ministry wrote in.
I hope this isn't an omen: the invention never caught on and The Times published the official bankruptcy notice of the company on December 21, 1937:
MR. JUSTICE SIMONDS made orders in the usual form yesterday for the compulsory winding-up of Notificator Development Limited
Also in the Archive blog: Who invented the Smiley sign?
 100 years ago Lloyd George delivered his swingeing hack at the rich in what became known as the People's Budget. Here is the report of the speech in full, and you can listen to a recording of him giving it, on the Number 10 website.
To pay for the Liberals' social reform programme, land tax and death duties were steeply increased and a super tax imposed on the rich: "On incomes over £5,000 a super tax of 6d is to be levied on the amount by which it exceeds £3,000."
Predictably, the Budget went down like a bucket of cold sick with the moneyed classes. The Times, reasonably enough, accused Lloyd George of electioneering - "The notion of every quack politician is to persuade the poor that salvation lies in plundering the rich" - and, not so reasonably, of vindictiveness: "It is seen also to be a vindictive Budget, which strikes heavily and repeatedly at the classes who do not favour the party now in power."
Such was the outrage that the Lords refused to back the Budget, which gave the Liberals the opportunity to bring in the 1911 Parliament Act to limit their power.
In December 1909, Lloyd George published his Budget and the ensuing debate in book form - which only increased the scepticism and hostility of his opponents:
The financial measures ... embodied in the Budget were put forward as a beginning - a very moderate beginning - of the process of eating up [the business community and the landowners]. The picture of the intended victims feeling joy at the prospect has not been equalled since the Walrus and the Carpenter invited the oysters for a walk
[I'm sorry, the pic at the top, of Lloyd George with Winston Churchill, is from the following year, but you get the idea]
Extraordinary Times report on a French Army school in Algeria in 1959: "Humane" Methods Of Torture: Alleged Army training in Algeria ...
A captain gave five rules to be followed for torture: -
(1) it must be clean
(2) it must not be in the presence of young people
(3) it must not be in the presence of sadists
(4) it must be done by an officer or some responsible person
(5) it must be humane, that is, it must stop as soon as the victim has "talked" and it must not leave any traces.
On these conditions, the captain told his audience. they had the right to use water and electricity.
You can see why the editor put "humane" in quotes.
Also in The Archive blog: Waterboarding was a war crime in WW2. What's changed?
 Many thanks to reader Hugh L'Estrange for emailing us after seeing this Times Archive picture in our slideshow:
By a strange irony, your picture of the "cheerful shopkeeper" standing in her doorway in September 1940 was published on the very day that I was visiting a cousin of my mother's and the subject of another cousin came up.
In September 1940, at the age of 17, Frederick Stiles was working in the family bakery and came upstairs from the ovens below to get a breath of fresh air. As he stood in the doorway of the shop in Packington Street, Islington - probably just like the woman in your picture - a bomb came down and flattened the shop and he was killed.
As a matter of interest, you may like to know that the family opened another baker's shop after that in Strutton Ground which still bears their name: Stiles, although it no longer belongs to any member of the family.
Visit our Archive topic page for The Times's coverage of the Blitz
I see that a lot of the commenters on our Star Trek review are taking umbrage about the writer drawing in parallels with presidencies of Bush and Obama. Nothing new there.
When Alan Coren was The Times's TV reviewer in 1976 he wrote this brilliant piece about Star Trek as a symbol of America which, frankly, doesn't seem to have dated much at all:
What is the Starship Enterprise but America's unflawed vision of herself? There, in the far and unspecific future, she hurtles hither and yon (if Einstein will forgive me) sorting out the problems of dissident planets, saving them from their own weaknesses, civilizing their rough and threatening edges, gently imposing her vision of what is good and right and just and decent, like some intergalactic Mary Poppins ...
In Star Trek we never see Earth: but we are left to imagine it as a place of white picket fences, where people with clean hair eat hamburgers and take lunar vacations in Bermuda shorts. The poignancy comes because it all works: Star Trek, week by heart-rending week, shows US diplomacy in infallibly triumphant action. Out there, over the rainbow, all the efforts and techniques that come to nothing in south-east Asia or Europe or the Middle East, all the interventions in foreign affairs, all the complex diplomatic stunts, all the American jugglings of alien statesmen, all the nods and becks and wreathed smiles, all work!
And the President?
Captain Kirk is the presidency, built like a quarterback, with a huge heart pumping the milk of human kindness around his wholesome body, and with an instinctive understanding of all manner of men. Mr Spock is his Kissinger, cold reason and proper suspicion wrapped up in pointed ears and a funny accent.
Together they represent the twinned American dream, love and intelligence combining in superstrength. They leave us in wondering grief over why, if these guys are so good at bringing talking rocks into line, at stopping Sirius wiping out Beetlejuice, at keeping the Milky Way safe from totalitarianism, at bringing American ideals to the nastiest asteroid that spins, it all goes wrong down here.
 Dick Cheney wants us all to know how effective waterboarding has been in providing the CIA with "intelligence". It doesn't have a good track record.
Water torture was commonly used in Japanese prisoner of war camps during interrogations. Eric Lomax recently described in The Times his horrific experience of it at the hands of the Kempetai, the Japanese military Police.
In another notorious case from 1943, prisoners in Changi jail were interrogated after British and Australian commandos had sunk Japanese ships in Singapore harbour. The Japanese believed, wrongly, that civilian internees in Changi had passed information to the commandos. Of the 57 who were interrogated, one was executed and another 13 died as a result of torture, beatings and starvation.
After the liberation of Singapore in 1945, a commission of inquiry set up by former prisoners reported on the incident, describing the "water treatment" that had been used, and the ease with which entirely innocent prisoners had been made to confess:
There were two forms of water torture. In the first the victim was tied or held down on his back and a cloth placed over his nose and mouth. Water was then poured on the cloth. Interrogation proceeded. and the victim was beaten if he did not reply. As he opened. his mouth to breathe or answer questions, water went down his throat until he could hold no more. Sometimes he was then beaten over his distended stomach, sometimes a Japanese jumped on his stomach or sometimes pressed on it with his foot. In the second, the victim was tied. lengthways on a ladder, face upwards, with a rung of the ladder across his throat and his head below the ladder. In this position he was slid head first into a tub of water and kept there until almost drowned. After being revived interrogation continued and he would be re-immersed.
As a war crimes investigator, my uncle, Cyril Wild, interrogated one of the accused officers. You can read a transcript of the interrogation in this blog by Robin Rowland, author of A River Kwai Story, the Sonkrai Tribunal.
After the war ended, Japanese officers who had participated in the torture of prisoners, including the use of waterboarding, were condemned to death in the Far East war crimes trials. And General Yamashita, commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines, was condemned to death by the US Supreme Court for his failure to prevent his forces from committing atrocities.
The controversial decision that a commander in chief should be held personally responsible for the acts of all the men under his command became known as the Yamashita Standard.
 Chocolate was still in short supply six months after the war, but money wasn't. Our Times reporter went to Regent Street - Hamley's, presumably - to see what people were buying in the way of Easter eggs.
Bizarrely, eggs for grown-ups contained cigarettes and scent, while the children's were filled with guns, tanks and aircraft models. I was quite charmed by this description of the manager getting carried away playing with the toys until I remembered being in Hamley's a couple of Christmases ago, and hopping up and down for ever trying to get the attention of any staff who weren't doing exactly the same.
Yesterday the staid manager of a noted Regent street toy-house was to be seen playing with a whole fleet of the new wonderful toy tanks. He had his account books and ledgers, his letter baskets, and other office paraphernalia arranged to form obstacles for the jolly toys to surmount, and grunting and groaning the little tanks did their job, to his huge delight, while male parents, demobilized and not, clamoured for toys of which the whole stock at the moment was represented by those which were gambolling for the manager.
 If you're heading for the seaside this weekend take a thermos; Met Office statistics show that we're more likely to get snow at Easter than at Christmas and, in case you hadn't noticed, the temperature's been dropping.
Here are ten weather reports from the Archive to send a chill down the spine.
1869: An Easter snowstorm
We had an extraordinary snowstorm on Easter Sunday, which continued without ceasing from 7am till 2.55pm and fell with great violence from 10am till noon. At 11.30am many snow flakes were two inches in diameter, and the wire wheel of my electrometer, which has withstood the snows and storms of 20 years, was broken by the weight of the snow
1883: The Easter holidays
Easter Monday ended with a snowstorm, which made the bar-parlours of country inns seem cosier than ever to the travellers who had urged their overladen horses along dusty roads all afternoon
Despite the snow, the trains seemed to keep running. How unlike today.
1913: A stormy Easter
The Easter holidays have been characterized by weather of the wildest description. Worthing was the most severely affected, a great part of its pier being blown down. During the height of the storm a man named Doick was blown into the water and when rescued artificial respiration had to be resorted to.
1922: Easter weather medley: Gales, sun, rain and snow
Heavy gales blew throughout the day on Saturday and although many hours of sunshine occured snow and hail were experienced locally. The sudden burst of summerlike warmth which visited Southern England on Good Friday was of very brief duration.
1930: Making the best of it
All the pretty new frocks have lad to be either left at home or huddled up in thick waterproofs and scarves; and all the brave new grey flannels or knickerbockers have had a baptism of snow, hail, sleet, rain, and mud.
1938: Easter frost
Easter Monday opened with one of the most severe frosts since last autumn. For those who kept moving the weather was not disagreeable. One effect of the cold wind was to send more people into the museums and art galleries than is usual on a sunny Easter Monday
1951: Easter weather hazards
Intermittant snow, sun and showers have made the Easter holiday a doubtful venture. At Brighton a few hardy visitors hazarded a deck chair in a sheltered corner
1953: Sunshine and storm, snow in Lakeland
Visitors to Blackpool had an unhappy experience. At one time every bus shelter on the front was full of holiday makers. In Devon there was sunshine on the south coast, snow on Dartmoor, and thunder. lightning, and hailstorms in other areas.
1964: Coldest Easter for 80 years
Those who did venture out to the coast either sat in their cars or had a brisk walk, a cup of tea and started for home early. The one bright spot, the AA said, was western Scotland. Picnickers were out in the Trossachs
1970: Sun and snow lure Easter travellers
Snowploughs were used in nine northern counties and skiers were out in the Cheviots
1975: North wind brings a white Easter
Britain began the Easter holidays yesterday with ice and snow falls of up to six inches as an Arctic airstream swept south through the country. More snow is forecast
Hitler :(
The Blitz :(
U-boats :(
There wasn't a lot to smile about in 1941, at least until Hitler invaded Russia, so when a reader's letter on an entirely non-war-related subject landed on The Times Editor's desk it brightened a dark January day.
The reader, as you'd expect of someone with such a cheerfully left-field suggestion, was American. Mr Carleton K. Lewis of Arlington, Virginia, wanted to point out that the English language was "incompletely equipped in the matter of punctuation" - an idea worth a leading article:
Our leader writer was quite taken with the idea until the usual British bolshiness crept in. Who wants to be told when to smile? And anyway, Times journalists were trained, then as now, that if you need punctuation to show when you've made a joke, the joke can't be funny. The message of the leader could have come straight out of today's Style Guide:
... exclamation marks, rows of dots, underlinings, and (in print) italics are sad confessions of failure, props and crutches for a feeble style
Atlantic crossings being what they were in those days, it was April before Mr Lewis's reply came in. With immense charm, he thanks the Editor for publishing his idea:
The Times has the distinction of being the first publication in the world to put the smile sign in print, so that, if I am its spiritual father, The Times is its spiritual mother and you, Mr Editor, are its attending physician, or at least its midwife.
But unfortunately we had completely missed his point:
The smile sign is not intended as a label for jokes ... Rather it is intended to be used as a means of depicting a smile on the lips of a writer when he inscribes a particular sentence. And like all good things, it should be used with moderation.
And like so many heroic inventions, it came to nothing and we're stuck with this :) which I don't believe came into common use for at least 30 years.
Should Carleton K. Lewis get a special commendation though, for trying?
On December 28, 1908, a massive earthquake destroyed the town of Messina in Sicily killing more than 100,000 people. A huge tidal wave then swamped Reggio Calabria on the mainland, causing even more devastation.
The first reports completely underestimated the damage, and it took days before the full scale of the disaster was known. You can read the story, as it developed in The Times, in this topic page.
Welcome to the Times Archive Blog
- The Archive blog highlights hidden treasures and landmark moments from 200 years of The Times newspaper
- Times Archive is a digitised and searchable archive of every published issue of the newspaper from 1785-1985
- Sign up here to take your own journey through 200 years of history
- All the featured content on the Archive homepage and this blog is free-to-view
- Have you got a story to tell from the Archive? Email us
Rose Wild is the editor of Times Archive
|
