Headline News 70 Years Ago Today.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3064866/Read-history-happened-Extraordinary-Daily-Mail-pages-day-Adolf-Hitler-died-70-years-ago-week.html

Interesting to note however that back then Gordon's gin was £1.26 a bottle.

[jno]

they had the Cash Box charts in those days, I think.

[jno]

here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cash_Box_Best_Sellers_number-one_singles_of_1952

[stuey]

This thread was starting to get interesting, and then Mrs stewey wanted to go shopping! Am I correct in saying that the famous song "There'll Be Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover" was slightly incorrect as the blue bird is not indigenous to England?...Not that that detracts anything from the sentiment of it.

[jno]

that's correct, stuey, it's not indigenous to Europe at all as far as I know. But I suppose singing "there'sl be blackbirds..." would have sounded too ominous. And "There'll be pectoral sandpipers..." would have been hard to scan.

[stuey]

Yes, jno, I looked it up on "Wiki". Also, it's amazing how many other people had versions of that song both before and after her; however, I imagine that her version is, as they say nowadays, the "iconic" one.

[Jackdaw33]

Vera Lynn is still around at the grand old age of 98.

[anotheoldgit]

Did anyone see that excellent programme last week regarding the Queen and Princess Margaret joining London's jubilant crowds on VE night?

[jno]

I didn't but they've just made a fiction film about it, haven't they? (My OH has seen it and says it's rubbish, but other opinions are also possible, no doubt.)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1837562/

[seadogg]

VE day didnt quite end hostilities . I remember the fight that broke out over a plate of sausages at our street party.

[jno]

ah, you shouldn't have invited any Japanese until the war was really over, seadogg

[mushroom25]

the conclusion of the war in the pacific, now there's a debating point. the capitulation of japan was probably hastened by the use of nuclear weapons. or was it?
a ground invasion of japan would have been difficult, since so few areas of the coast were suited to an amphibious landing, and defence would have been concentrated there. but would operation downfall have realised the level of casualties forecast, ie more than the 200,000 killed by the bombing of hiroshima/nagasaki?
on a wider note, had the world not witnessed the appalling destructive capability of oppenheimer's toy, would they have been readily deployed in the cold war?