MEDICAL EXAMINER

Tabloid crosses line between science and science fiction.

Our examples of the cheapie tabloid National Examiner all have art on their front pages, but when you have a scoop like this cow blockbuster, typography alone is more than adequate. Needless to say—but we’ll do it anyway because in this millennium people believe in illuminati pedophile rings in pizza parlors—a cow never gave birth to a baby boy. Hope that wasn’t disappointing to hear. The story, from this issue that hit newsstands today in 1967, claims that it happened in Russia when a woman named Natasha Kropotkin was critically ill and her fetus was transferred to a cow in order to save its life. The fetus, not the cow.

Anyway, the achievement stands second only to the launch of Sputnik in Soviet scientific annals. Kropotkin is a Russian word meaning gullible, by the way. If the child had been real, though, he’d be in his fifties today, and we imagine him working in the field of animal husbandry, middle management level. Medically speaking, other than involuntarily mooing at times of stress and having a tremendous problem with gas, we picture him as normal in every way. He’d also be hung like a bull. Elsewhere inside Examiner are many more bizarre stories, and a couple of nice photos of Italian actress Maria Grazia Bucella. You can see plenty more mid-century tabloids in our comprehensive index located here.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1906—First Airplane Flight in Europe

Romanian designer Traian Vuia flies twelve meters outside Paris in a self-propelled airplane, taking off without the aid of tractors or cables, and thus becomes the first person to fly a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Because his craft was not a glider, and did not need to be pulled, catapulted or otherwise assisted, it is considered by some historians to be the first true airplane.

1965—Leonov Walks in Space

Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his spacecraft the Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes. At the end of that time Leonov’s spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter Voskhod’s airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit’s pressure to bleed off, was barely able to get back inside the capsule, and in so doing became the first person to complete a spacewalk.

1966—Missing Nuke Found

Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.

1968—My Lai Massacre Occurs

In Vietnam, American troops kill between 350 and 500 unarmed citizens, all of whom are civilians and a majority of whom are women, children, babies and elderly people. Many victims are sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies are mutilated. The incident doesn’t become public knowledge until 1969, but when it does, the American war effort is dealt one of its worst blows.

1937—H.P. Lovecraft Dies

American sci-fi/horror author Howard Phillips Lovecraft dies of intestinal cancer in Providence, Rhode Island at age 46. Lovecraft died nearly destitute, but would become the most influential horror writer ever. His imaginary universe of malign gods and degenerate cults was influenced by his explicitly racist views, but his detailed and procedural style of writing, which usually pitted men of science or academia against indescribable monsters, remains as effective today as it was eighty years ago.

2011—Illustrator Michel Gourdon Dies

French pulp artist Michel Gourdon, who was the less famous brother of Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, dies in Coudray, France aged eighty-five. He is known mainly for the covers he painted for the imprint Flueve Noir, but produced nearly 3,500 covers during his career.

Uncredited cover for Call Girl Central: 08~022, written by Frédéric Dard for Éditions de la Pensée Moderne and its Collection Tropiques, 1955.
Four pink Perry Mason covers with Robert McGinnis art for Pocket Books.
Unknown artist produces lurid cover for Indian true crime magazine Nutan Kahaniyan.
Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.

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