Vintage Pulp

December 13 2019

SHARK BAIT

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

We thought the 1952 issue of Adam we scanned a little while back was fragile. It has been surpassed by the above pastry crust-like issue from this month in 1955, which we barely got back into a plastic sleeve (reasonably) intact. In case you ever wondered why we stick with ’70s issues, that’s the answer. But the older mags often come bundled in lots with the newer ones. Anyway, it’s nice, with a brilliant cover illustration of a scuba diver and a shark, not the first time Adam has gone with this shark theme. The art is meant to reference one of the tales inside, Jonathan Edwards’ aquatic adventure “Deep Water Hero,” about a trio of fortune hunters that go diving on a shipwreck and run into shark trouble. There are lots of shark tales in these magazines, one every few issues. This one is probably the best we’ve read. In addition you get rare photos of Abbe Lane and various unknown models. We have eighteen scans below, sixty other issues in the website, and more from Adam to come.

Australia, Adam Magazine, Abbe Lane, Jonathan Edwards, magazine art

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 13

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.