Workers at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London remove scaffolding from the Victoria Tower. The image appeared in The Illustrated London News on the 20th of March, 1954.
From The Londonist, via the British Newspaper Archive.
Tag Archives: Vintage
Happy St Patrick’s Day!
It’s easy to lose track of everything with this virus taking over the world, but today is St Patrick’s Day, and my Irish surname demands I acknowledge it!
Happy Ukrainian New Year!
Happy Ukrainian New Year! As Ukrainian Christmas doesn’t happen until the 6th – 7th of January, New Year happens in the middle of the month.
Soviet New Year postcard of a boy in Ukrainian national dress. 1965.
On this day: the Christmas Season in Spain
5th January 1962: The Three Wise Men arrive at Barajas Airport in Madrid, Spain, where crowds of children wait to greet them.
On this day: Wounded soldiers in Norway.
27th December 1941: Wounded soldiers are transferred onto a landing craft in Vaagso (the island of Vågsøy), Norway. The country was under Nazi occupation at the time.
The photograph was taken during the one-day Operation Archery, a combined British and Norwegian raid against German forces that resulted in an Allied victory over the Nazis.
The Norwegian commander of the raid, Martin Linge, was killed in action during the operation.
On this day: a Veteran Sergeant at Home
1st December 1940: The Blitz, the German air raid campaign against the United Kingdom, was in full force in December of 1940.
Britain’s Home Guard, made up of 1.5 million volunteers ineligible for regular military service (due to circumstances such as age), operated from 1940 to 1944, guarding their homeland during the Second World War.
The caption of this photograph reads:
A veteran sergeant in the Dorking Home Guard cleans his Tommy gun at the dining room table, before going on parade, 1 December 1940.
On this day: Coventry in Ruins
The English city of Coventry suffered numerous Nazi bombing attacks in the blitz of 1940, but the worst came in November.
The city was bombarded from the 14th to the 15th, killing hundreds of people and injuring many hundreds more.
These photographs were taken on the 16th, showing many buildings ruined, and the recently built Owen Owen department store – the exterior still stands, but the inside was destroyed.
Coventry Cathedral was largely ruined, and still stands as a shell today. The new cathedral was built next door, and opened in 1962.
Hundreds more people were killed in German bombings the following year.
