Not wanted

I don’t want to read any of these books because I’m sure the titles/covers are far more fun than the contents are likely to be.

A short history of America

UFOs

In an issue of “UFO Magazine” in 2002 they announced “The end of the world as we know it” would happen “by 2020” so we haven’t got long to put our affairs in order. Actually, this “end of the world” scenario is based on real facts by real scientists measuring the drifting of the north/south magnetic poles and really will happen next week/sometime in the next 1000 years. At some point the poles will have moved far enough from the earth’s north/south axis that a “pole shift” will occur. No one knows if this will happen instantly or over a period of time. What is known is that this event has periodically happened a number of times (every half-million years or so) in Earth’s history and we are already overdue. So one day the north pole will be in the south and vice-versa. Migrating birds will be mightily confused and who knows what it will do to humanity. Scientists suspect that the electricity grid/the internet may be affected by the magnetic changes. If people can’t access Facebook then I guess it really will be the end of the world !!!

“UFO Magazine” steadily grew in popularity throughout the 1990s and early noughties but disappeared in 2004 a few months after the untimely death of the editor Graham W. Birdsall.

If only one of the many hundreds/thousands of articles/sightings could actually be proved to be of alien origin it would rock the foundations of science and religion and have the Sky Newsreaders in a tizzy.

Lights in the sky could be caused by many things but when numbers of professional pilots claim to have seen strange craft “as big as a battleship” hurtle past them, or describe small globes performing instant 90 degree turns before shooting away vertically you have to wonder what really is out there.

The more interesting/implausible articles in “UFO Magazine”, despite being better written/researched than many paperback books on the subject still often lack enough hard science or necessary detail of dates and names and places. This article fascinated me. In Texas in the 1890s many strange things were seen. Airships of unknown origin were seen bearing bright lights when all that would be available then were candles or oil lanterns. In the case described in this article one of these strange airships crashed into a windmill and exploded. A small body was recovered from the wreckage and buried and the unmarked grave was implausibly lost/forgotten about. Forty years later this strange skeleton was supposedly re-discovered. A three foot tall humanoid with four fingers and toes. The arm and leg bones were hollow like those found in birds. The head contained a tiny mouth, pointed chin, and huge eye sockets. The author wonders if the large eyes signify that he/she/it lived in a place with low levels of light, and the hollow bones signified a light gravity (or a heavy one) ?!?. But where is the detailed forensic analysis of this skeleton? Surely with modern equipment it could be ascertained if this was a fake or for real. But if it was a fake, what purpose did it serve? It didn’t make anyone any money as the only mention of it appeared in an obscure book published many many years before UFO Magazine came across the story and printed this article.

Then I peruse the Interweb and find the “same” story although now it seems the alien pilot was buried in the town cemetery (although no one seems to remember where) and has never been exhumed. Although the story sounds fantastic, it was only ever reported in the local newspaper of the time. It seems uncannily familiar to the “Roswell” incident that would be reported 50 years later (and ten miles away) !?!

PS: And back in the news the other day was an item about the NASA astronauts circling the dark side of the moon in the 1960s and hearing “music”. I wonder what that was all about?

Nuff Said 56

And there was me thinking Laptops were a relatively new invention.

More Disc

I purchased the pop newspaper “Disc” every week from 1966 until the summer of 1975 when it was merged into “Record Mirror”. By 1975 I had also been buying the edgier and ever-improving “NME” for a number of years anyway.

Disc 16th February 1974

In the early 1970s “Disc” was useful for its pop pirate radio coverage and for classified adverts where you could send off for cheaply printed duplicated/photostatted newsletters from the likes of Crispian St John containing yet more pop pirate radio info.

A highlight for me was always J.Edward Oliver’s comic strip  featuring Fresco Le Raye. This always contained pop-related in-jokes and numerous mentions of JEO’s continued infatuation with Madeline Smith. Of course, writing this gives me the perfect opportunity to insert an image of MS (and JEO’s likeness of her too).

It’s worth a closer look at JEO’s survey.

Biggles Flies Undone

W.E. Johns wrote 100 Biggles books between 1932 and 1968. Obviously this wasn’t one of them.

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It seems he died in 1968 (at the age of 75) whilst writing what he had already planned to be the final Biggles book which was to have had the odd title “Biggles does some homework” !?!

Rocking the boat

Sometime around Easter 2014 when Radio Caroline celebrated her 50th birthday this (mostly correct) article appeared in a women’s magazine.