WHISKEY DECISIONS

Too much booze leads to terrible decisions about military secrets—and music.

Everyone knows booze makes people shoot their mouths off, so what better way for a liquor company to support the Allied effort during World War II than by producing a propaganda poster that says—basically—don’t let our product affect you the way our product affects people? The Montreal based whiskey distiller House of Seagram did exactly that when it hired artist Essargee, aka Henry Sharp Goff, Jr. to paint the above poster warning of the potentially disastrous combo of booze, chattiness, and military secrets. You can see Essargee’s signature just about in the middle of the poster.

This piece is pure genius, not just because it features a highly stylized, almost new wave Führer, but because it could be produced today with slightly different text and instead of talking about Hitler it could be cautioning that drinking too much can make you listen to punk-ass Justin Bieber. This is a message the people need today. We had no idea Hitler and Bieber resembled each other so closely, but you see that, right? Like twins, these two. Now if only all Bieber’s music could be doused with petrol and incinerated we’d be getting somewhere.

In any case, the House of Seagram and Essargee cooked up several of these propaganda pieces together, all of which are highly collectible today. We have another two of their collaborations below for you to check out, and you can see a third—entitled “Starve Him with Silence”—at our previous post on World War II propaganda from Germany, Japan, Russia, England, and the U.S. here.

World War II, House of Seagram, Adolf Hitler, Essargee, Henry Sharp Goff Jr., Justin Bieber, nazis

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

March 18

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.

March 18

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.

March 17

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.

March 16

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.

March 15

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.

March 15

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.