Vintage film, TV, documents, and photographic footage from down the years

[Kryztian]

The hunt for the Loch Ness creature - 1969. It is announce that with new submarines and other technology the 1400 year old mystery of Nessie will finally be solved. (1 minute 10 seconds)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=X_EWNYSLTKQ

[Kryztian]

From BBC TV, 1957. The harvesting of the spaghetti crop in the Ticino, Switzerland 1957 after a very mild winter.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

After this 2 minute segment was aired, many Brits inquired as to whether or not these same trees could grow in England.

[mountain_jim]

https://x.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1838590375889375474

England 1945, they just lived thru WW2.

What do you think they would be saying to their children and grandchildren that allowed England to be invaded and captured without even trying to defend it?

[grapevine]

The Greatest Boxer of all time - Muhammad Ali (1942–2016)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1lvkeUjEMlA

5:18

Cassius Clay First Fight Vs Tunney Hunsaker (October 1960)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sQvfxjAbJ6Q

(0.51)

The infamous "Ali Shuffle"

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sSPirnBwNds

[Tintin]

From 1674 and really too fascinating not to share here:

A Proclamation To Refrain the Spreading of False News and Licentious Talking of Matters of State and Government

Charles II, 1674



350 years later? Um..as Keir "Sausage" Starmer starts to more closely remind one of Oliver Cromwell with each passing day. (We've gone almost full-circle if one considers a year = a degree circumference.) I digress.

Interestingly, and gleaned from the embedded Wikipedia link (above), I hadn't remembered when the political parties - Conservative/Tory and Labour/Whig - first became established. It was in 1679:

In 1679, Titus Oates's fabrication of a supposed Popish Plot sparked the Exclusion Bill Crisis when it was revealed that Charles's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, had become a Catholic. The crisis saw the birth of the pro-exclusion Whig and anti-exclusion Tory parties. Charles sided with the Tories and, after the discovery of the Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1681 and ruled alone until his death in 1685.

[Kryztian]

Posted by Tintin (here)
From 1674 and really too fascinating not to share here:

A Proclamation To Refrain the Spreading of False News and Licentious Talking of Matters of State and Government

Charles II, 1674

Fact Checker and Censor - the second oldest profession in the world

Thanks for this precious find Tintin!!!

[Brigantia]

Posted by Kryztian (here)
From BBC TV, 1957. The harvesting of the spaghetti crop in the Ticino, Switzerland 1957 after a very mild winter.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

After this 2 minute segment was aired, many Brits inquired as to whether or not these same trees could grow in England.

Haha, I remember seeing this in the 1970s in a montage of the BBC's April Fool spoof reporting in the past! They used to do April Fool clips on the 1st of April, not sure whether the BBC do this now as they don't seem to have a sense of humour anymore.

Maybe April Fool is now banned as so many people are easily offended in these present times.

[Kryztian]

Posted by Brigantia (here)

Posted by Kryztian (here)
From BBC TV, 1957. The harvesting of the spaghetti crop in the Ticino, Switzerland 1957 after a very mild winter.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

After this 2 minute segment was aired, many Brits inquired as to whether or not these same trees could grow in England.

Haha, I remember seeing this in the 1970s in a montage of the BBC's April Fool spoof reporting in the past! They used to do April Fool clips on the 1st of April, not sure whether the BBC do this now as they don't seem to have a sense of humour anymore.

When the BBC ran this the first time in 1957, they were inundated with requests for information about how one could buy a spaghetti tree and this also sparked an interest in England for Italian food. There is even a Wikipedia page about this hoax.

CNN stated that this was "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled" which is pure modesty on their part, considering the part they played in the "Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq" hoax, the "Russiagate" hoax, and their magnum opus, the "COVID vaccine will save you" hoax, only to name a few of their triumphant achievements of late. Then again, "reputable news organization" is now something of an oxymoron.

Maybe April Fool is now banned as so many people are easily offended in these present times.

Well, that should make any April Fool's Day prank that much more meaningful now that they have tried to ban them. Long live the Fools of April!!!

[avid]

Posted by Kryztian (here)

Posted by Brigantia (here)

Posted by Kryztian (here)
From BBC TV, 1957. The harvesting of the spaghetti crop in the Ticino, Switzerland 1957 after a very mild winter.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

After this 2 minute segment was aired, many Brits inquired as to whether or not these same trees could grow in England.

Haha, I remember seeing this in the 1970s in a montage of the BBC's April Fool spoof reporting in the past! They used to do April Fool clips on the 1st of April, not sure whether the BBC do this now as they don't seem to have a sense of humour anymore.

When the BBC ran this the first time in 1957, they were inundated with requests for information about how one could buy a spaghetti tree and this also sparked an interest in England for Italian food. There is even a Wikipedia page about this hoax.

CNN stated that this was "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled" which is pure modesty on their part, considering the part they played in the "Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq" hoax, the "Russiagate" hoax, and their magnum opus, the "COVID vaccine will save you" hoax, only to name a few of their triumphant achievements of late. Then again, "reputable news organization" is now something of an oxymoron.

Maybe April Fool is now banned as so many people are easily offended in these present times.

Well, that should make any April Fool's Day prank that much more meaningful now that they have tried to ban them. Long live the Fools of April!!!

And the BBC still takes us for fools daily, with lies and obfuscations about the current state of affairs/ and or affairs of state 🙄

[Tintin]

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)

Posted by Tintin (here)
whichever year it was.

I well recall the years of only three TV channels. And what years they were! The advent of more channels only served to dilute the quality.

The "Who Shot JR" thing took place in 1980 (unbelievably). This was the line-up (I looked into this) for a typical Saturday on BBC1 in that year. Swap Shop, Grandstand, Tom And Jerry, The Basil Brush Show, Dr. Who, The Generation Game, Juliet Bravo, The Two Ronnies, News and Sport, Dallas, Parkinson, The Saturday Night Film.

Compare with today's schedule -- in my opinion it's chock full of rubbish!

Here's a snapshot, from 1980 - that's the entire schedule of TV for October 3rd that year



Here's the schedule for the year before while ITV workers were on strike...

[Kryztian]

Posted by Tintin (here)
Here's a snapshot, from 1980 - that's the entire schedule of TV for October 3rd that year

On our side of the pond (the USA) most people had six or seven TV stations. The big three (CBS, ABC, NBC) which featured a lot of new programs, then another 2 or three which featured "reruns", often black and white movies and 20 year old TV programs, and then one public TV station. Here is the prime time schedule for one evening in 1975 from a TV Guide.



And if you really were a serious TV watcher, you had to subscribe to the weekly TV Guide magazine if you wanted to know what to watch.

[Tintin]

Posted by Kryztian (here)

Posted by Tintin (here)
Here's a snapshot, from 1980 - that's the entire schedule of TV for October 3rd that year

On our side of the pond (the USA) most people had six or seven TV stations. The big three (CBS, ABC, NBC) which featured a lot of new programs, then another 2 or three which featured "reruns", often black and white movies and 20 year old TV programs, and then one public TV station. Here is the prime time schedule for one evening in 1975 from a TV Guide.



And if you really were a serious TV watcher, you had to subscribe to the weekly TV Guide magazine if you wanted to know what to watch.

Good Lord: 6, even Quite a thing. Whither the quality though dear man; whither the quality

It's so so interesting, at least to me.

Where I worked in medical education workshops back in the day we used to provide genuinely inspirational quotes as a part of the pedagogy. One of my eternal favourites was this, a Hebrew proverb: "Never confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time."

I guess, maybe, that one can adduce TV listings as a device for learning, or at least exposure to something perhaps educational. Certainly distractional, yet, appropriate methinks.

"Never mind the textbooks, here's the TV listings!", and if I got around to it again musically I really do think that calling a band TV Listings might just work, wonderfully.

Abstracting: "How are we doing, folks? Have you guessed the genre? Can you play triangle. Can you play hot potato? Hello?" (I'm in one of those moments right now, and the rice is calling)

[Kryztian]

Posted by Tintin (here)

Posted by Kryztian (here)

Good Lord: 6, even Quite a thing.

My German relatives were even more impressed because they, poor souls, only had 2 stations, so on nights were the programming was subpar they would find themselves reading novels by Dostoevsky and Turgenev. They couldn't wait to visit us in America to watch shows that were only rumored to exist like "Charlie's Angels" and "The Love Boat" would complain "We have to wait another 5 year before we get wonderful programs like this".

Whither the quality though dear man; whither the quality

Well Tintin, you should notice the quality is on channel 13, the public TV station. That's where we uppity Yanks connected with British movies and British TV dramas (note "Masterpiece Theatre" in the lower right corner).

But hell really broke loose in the summer of 1983 when cable television came knocking at the door and the number of stations exploded to something like 50. What ever the quality level was before, it took a big nosedive into a very deep rubbish hole.

It's amazing that so many of us managed to escape the the hypnotic Orwellian labyrinth of that little box which, we were told, should be the focal point of every living room and where we were to direct all our free conscious energy. (I say this while gazing into my computer screen for many long hours)

[Tintin]

The Philosophers' Football Match - 1972 - Monty Python. Genius, I'd say



Here's what the Wikipedia entry says:

"International Philosophy", commonly referred to as the Philosophers' Football Match, is a Monty Python sketch depicting a football match in the Munich Olympiastadion between philosophers representing Greece and Germany. Starring in the sketch are Archimedes (John Cleese), Socrates (Eric Idle), Hegel (Graham Chapman), Nietzsche (Michael Palin), Marx (Terry Jones), and Kant (Terry Gilliam). Palin also provides the match television commentary.

The footage opens with the banner headline "International Philosophy", and Palin providing the narrative. Confucius is the referee and keeps times with an hourglass. St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine (sporting haloes) serve as linesmen.[1] The German manager is Martin Luther. The match is designed as a World Cup for the most well-known western philosophers made global with Confucius arbitrating the match. As play begins, the philosophers break from their proper football positions only to walk around on the pitch as if deeply pondering, and in some cases declaiming their theories.[1] Franz Beckenbauer, the sole genuine footballer on the pitch and a "surprise inclusion" in the German team, is left more than a little confused.

Despite being set in the Olympiastadion, the sketch was instead filmed in Munich's Grünwalder Stadion.[2] It originally featured in the second Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus episode broadcast on 18 December 1972 and was regularly screened at the group's live shows, including Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982)[3] and Monty Python Live (Mostly) (2014).

The Greek players, mostly with long grey beards and hair, play in togas, while the Germans sport a variety of period dress including Victorian frock coats and breeches. "Nobby" Hegel carries a grey top hat, while Beckenbauer wears the red and white of the 1972 Bayern Munich football strip.

...and continues

[meat suit]

I grew up in (then)west Germany.
There were 3 state run channels starting at 6pm.

Somewhere mid 80's a couple of private channels started up and broadcast all day.
I still remember my shock walking into a friends flat mid day and there was something on telly...

[grapevine]

Hiroshima - the unknown images

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QrqjADwzDm0

(52 mins)
A poignant reminder as we all draw ever closer to a nuclear exchange, as is the following comment under the video:
このような貴重な写真や体験談を残して下さって感謝しかないです。この動画が世界中に広まって一人でも多くの方の目に止まりますように。戦争を起こそうとしてる人は自分では戦いません。戦いたくない人 が戦い犠牲に なるのです。権力の為なのかお金の為なのか分からないが、こんな悔しく悲しいことがあってはならない。
Translation:
"I can only thank you for leaving such valuable photos and experiences. I hope this video spreads all over the world and catches the eye of as many people as possible. People who want to start a war don't fight it themselves. Those who don't want to fight are the ones who fight and become sacrifices. I don't know if it's because of power or money, but something so frustrating and sad should never happen."

Threads, also a vintage film from 1984, was shown on BBC4 a couple of days ago and is available on iPlayer which can only be viewed if you have an account there.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02kgkkg/threads/

Tbh I found the aftermath even more disturbing than the event itelf :/

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I thought this was a remarkably evocative image -- of Joseph Boxhall, Fourth Officer of the Titanic, who survived the disaster.

He's pictured here watching a private screening of movie 'A Night To Remember' (1958) which dramatises the sinking of the liner.

On the night of the disaster, it was Officer Boxhall who calculated Titanic's position so that a distress signal could be sent out. He would later be in charge of lifeboat No. 2. At 4am, he spotted the Carpathia on the horizon, and guided her to the lifeboats by sending up flares.

Boxhall talked very little about his experiences that night. Only years later would he begin to open up, and he agreed to serve as a technical consultant on the movie. He is noted to have been very pleased with the result. He went on to attend the premiere, in London and New York, with a number of fellow survivors.

One can only imagine what he was thinking and feeling as this scene (below) played out.

[Tintin]

Ronnie Barker here performing one of my favourite segments from the Two Ronnies British television show: very very clever and extraordinarily funny

The Two Ronnies (16th October 1976). An appeal on behalf of the Loyal Society for the Provensination of Pispronounciation.



...followed by one of the most iconic and memorable Fawlty Towers scenes: "Duck's off, sorry." This from 1975

[mountain_jim]

https://x.com/ClownWorld_/status/1851400154643120465

A drive-in restaurant in Portland, Oregon, circa 1958.

[Brigantia]

This is a lovely montage of photos titled 'On the eve of war' set to the tune of Greensleeves, taken in England during the summer of 1939 on a couple's honeymoon. The road signs shown related to places in Norfolk, on the east coast. Look out for the milk hand cart at 3:09 minutes, that's how milk used to be delivered!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JkmytA-4GkE