Wednesday, May 16, 2012

16 May 1950

hi there

well, every now and then, i like to take an entirely random date from the past and have a look at events and publications from that date. i can't realy do this for dates in the future, i suppose.

over in England Royal Tunbridge Wells, as opposed to Regular Tunbridge Wells, commenced hosting the 32nd Philatelic Congress of Great Britain. this was a celebration of what surely to this day must remain the most enjoyable and certainly endearing form of communication.




one can only assume that Master Martin Bond got his letter in good time and that, with such incients not being possible with this format, one thousand people did not accidentally get "CC'd" on the mail!

still in Blighty and the London Gazette on this day published a supplement to their Friday 12 May 1950 edition. this was produced under authority of The King (not The King, as in The King, Elvis Presley) to announce recognition of several servicemen, particularly those who had served in Malaya.




i would imagine that such announcements these days are confined to news broadcasts, or this thing called "the internet", rather than special supplemental editions to newspapers. a bit of a shame, really, as it takes some of the importance of such matters away.

in respect of things being a bit different then than they are now, this article on the front page of the prestigious Melbourne Argus caught my eye.




whereas today - sadly - there are plane crashes which result in no trace of the plane being found, it's just about unthinkable that a plane with no apparent history would be in the skies. well, except in the case of that now cancelled (praise be) show CSI Miami, in which they had a plane go into space without any sort of aviation authority being aware of it.

i do wonder if any further information was found about the above - that's something that i shall do my best to research a bit more later. in the mean time, it's over to America with their wide range of publications. first off, let's have a look at the Wisconsin State Journal.




skipping over Truman's calls for a fight against 'Fair Deal Foes', this is an interesting front page as it shows the early stages of the propoganda elements to what became the Cold War. note, if you will, prominence is given to what "Soviet Russia" is up to. the juxtaposition of this in relation to celebratory coverage of the excellence of the American way, here exemplified by an article on A Day At The Zoo, for Americans have nothing to worry about bar enjoying such days, is a trend that would be seen in the American press for some 40 years after this appeared.

now then. the more trendy, self-obsessed type of "with it" and groovy sort of writers of the 90s for some reason believed, with their "no logo" stuff and that, they had coined the phrase "globalization" as some sort of replacement for the Cold War and neo-colonization. not quite, as it turns out, for the 16 May 1950 edition of Time ran a story on this very subject, even using one of the Companies that were targeted by these types in the 90s to illustrate the point.




Coca Cola was probably the first brand that wasn't military or war related to have a truly global marketplace. with some fairness and all likelihood, though, this was something that was one would imagine given rather positive coverage at the time. and why not, really - for what point is there in uleashing a Company or business venture if not to be a success?

and finally from America on this day, a magazine that i would love to get my hands on!




i recall fondly a family holiday in Torquay / Cornwall where i got my hands on a whole stack of magazines like this, although i think they were editions of Tales Of The Uncanny. i would love to get some editions of these again, they were most excellent reads!

well, there you have it for this somewhat random "on this day in history" sort of thing. i hope this has been of some interest to one or two of you, and if you will excuse me i need to dash and make a phone call in relation to this date, as it were.


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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