The 1930s and 40s with their stiff upper lips, blitz spirit and derring-do remind me a bit of the quote from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, doctored a bit by me:
“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And Cadbury’s chocolate wasn’t buggered up by Kraft Foods.”
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk – eat it, just like some of the “wisest people you ever saw” do.
Here’s a striking little article in the Children’s Newspaper from May 1922. This is it in its entirety:
The Children’s Newspaper, 13th May 1922
“Eleven dynamite cartridges were exploded in the South American lake where the plesiosaurus was said to have been seen. It did not appear.”
Well, you can’t blame it, but there’s obviously a back story that was so well known at the time that further elaboration was unnecessary. I looked it up as I hadn’t heard of Nahuelito, the South American version of Nessie before. A supposed sighting of a lake monster in Nahuel Huapi Lake in Patagonia, Argentina was hot news in 1922. There’s some “photographic evidence” such as the picture below (taken later than 1922) – and they look pretty much the same as the ones of Nessie. But Nahuelito remains unfound just the same.
Nahuelito
This was a big time for monsters of lake and sea, apparently. In another article a year later, a Mr Mitchell-Hedges “described his extraordinary battles with the giant fish of the ocean,” and “began by stating his belief that in the depths of the Pacific terrible monsters, survivors of the Mesozoic age, still exist.”
The Western Morning News, 25th October, 1923
A bit of investigation about Mr Mitchell-Hedges reveals him to have been the owner of the strange crystal skull which featured on the cover on one of my favourite childhood books, Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. He led quite the Boys Own-style life – his job description was pretty much just “adventurer”. Some say he was the inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones, too, although not George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, to be fair, who you would expect to know such things. I’ve been tracking him in The British Newspaper Archive, and it’s quite a wild ride. But that’s another adventure for another post….
This little article in The Children’s Newspaper from 1937 caught my eye. Wear more milk?
The Children’s Newspaper, 3rd April, 1937
In the 1930s, Italian chemist Antonio Ferretti worked out how to extract fibres from the casein protein in milk, which could then be used to make material. It was called Lanital (and Aralac in America). This was celebrated as a national success in fascist Italy, which was looking to promote self-sufficiency in fabrics and everything else, on account of sanctions being placed on the country by the League of Nations in response to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
In the end, Lanital didn’t wash well, apparently smelling a bit like sour milk when damp, and bacteria could eat away at it, which is why it was soon replaced by the newer synthetic fibres.
Futurist poet Antonio Marinetti wrote “The Poem of the Milk Dress” about the invention of Lanital and how it was interwoven with the fascist system of Italy. In the extract below, “the man” is referring to Mussolini:
“The Man commands Milk, divide yourself […]
And let this complicated milk be welcome power power power let’s exalt this MILK MADE OF REINFORCED STEEL MILK OF WAR MILITARIZED MILK”
The Children’s Newspaper confidently declaring the mammoth a “mistake” in 1922, there.
The Children’s Newspaper, 13th May 1922
Wikipedia tells me that mammoths lived through the Pliocene epoch (5 million years ago) to the woolly mammoths of the Holocene epoch (dying out 4,500 years ago – although we are still in this epoch). As a species, they lived through multiple epochs, over millions of years, and were still around when Ancient Egypt was a well established civilisation. In fact, if the mammoth died out around 4,500 years ago, that is around the same time as the Great Pyramid of Giza was being built. I know that Egypt got started on the whole civilisation thing earlier than most of humanity, but it blows my mind that mammoths were roaming the earth at the same time as the Pharoahs were strapping on their false beards.
Seems a bit harsh in the circumstances to dismiss them as a mistake, especially as they seem to have died out largely because of either climate change or being hunted by humans. And seeing as modern humans have been around a mere 200,000 years.
And there’s also a good chance that one day the woolly mammoth will be resurrected, Jurassic Park-style, by cloning frozen DNA found in a Siberian specimen, the 40,000-year-old Buttercup.
On another note, look at this! A real, live teddy bear from Edinburgh Zoo, from the same issue. Awwww. Not a mistake, this one. The Children’s Newspaper, 13th May 1922
This is my copy of The Children’s Newspaper from June 10th, 1922. I confess to mainly buying it as that date is also my birthday. The June 10th bit anyway, not the 1922 part.
The Children’s Newspaper, 10th June 1922
A couple of interesting, on-the-brink-of-discovery, articles in this. Firstly this one, which talks of the difficulties before nuclear energy becomes possible: The Children’s Newspaper, 10th June 1922
But this one I find fascinating, given just how near it lurks to a reality-altering discovery.
A very distant star cluster, N.G.C. 7006, had been observed by astronomers, and was thought to be 220,000 light years from Earth (it’s now measured as being 135,000 light years away). The Children’s Newspaper wonders if this, possibly the most distant thing yet seen, is actually on the edge of the universe. In a way they were right, given that the Milky Way was then actually the known universe – this star cluster is on the outskirts of our own galaxy. The concept of other galaxies was still undiscovered. But not for long. In fact, it was the very next year, 1923, that Edwin Hubble, one of my all-time heroes, concluded that the extremely distant Andromeda star cluster was actually the Andromeda galaxy. One of those shifts in perception that fundamentally change the way we view the universe as a whole, and an incredible mental feat.
He expanded our idea of what the universe is, and then followed that up in 1929 with the discovery that the universe was actually expanding to boot. Whaddaguy.
From The Children’s Newspaper in 1922 comes a riddle:
Jack and His Apples
Jack was a very good natured boy and, meeting his younger brother just after he had purchased some apples, he gave his brother one third of the total number and one third of an apple. Jack then had one apple left. How many did he have in the first place?
The Children’s Newspaper, 13th May 1922
Any ideas? I have to say, I was foxed by this, and cursed the fact that the solution was only available in the next issue, which I don’t have.
So, hooray for finding another online archive! The Children’s Newspaper was amalgamated into Look and Learn magazine in 1965 and the Look and Learn site has put up archived issues of the paper here
So I found the answer in the next issue. It’s right at the bottom of the below image, so as not to spoiler the answer if you’re doing it….
Arthur Mee founded The Children’s Newspaper in 1919 and it continued after his death, until its final issue in 1965. At this point the sixties started to swing, it looked a bit too old fashioned and was integrated into “Look and Learn” magazine. He also presided over The Children’s Encyclopaedia, despite claiming to have no particular affinity to children. His aim wasn’t so much to entertain children as to produce upright citizens of the future, and The Children’s Newspaper was a proper newspaper aiming to keep pre-teens up to date with world news and science. I’ve got a couple of issues from 1922, and they’re still interesting to read today. Especially this article, which I love, from the issue dated 13th May 1922.
The Children’s Newspaper, 13th May 1922
Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout movement and its first Chief Scout, invented a word – “goom”. It’s a great word.
The Children’s Newspaper, 13th May 1922
B-P (as he was known) says,
“Who knows how to goom? It’s a funny word isn’t it? And you won’t find it in the dictionary; but I know its meaning, and when I’ve told you how to go gooming you will agree with me that that is the word for it.”
Essentially, the “goom” is the time just before daybreak, when the songbirds start chattering and before the rest of the world is awake. Once the cocks crow and signs of human life start to appear, “Man is awake; the sun is up; and gooming is at an end…..Good morning. The goom is over.”
Here’s the article:
The Children’s Newspaper, 13th May 1922
I think he’s right, “goom” is a brilliantly descriptive, yet silly, word and one I will always use in future (and you do see quite a lot of the goom with tiny kids in the house).
It’s a shame it didn’t stick around, well, apart from in Gracie Fields’ vernacular anyway….
