vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
We shared an example from Éditions Le Condor’s series La Môme “Double Shot” back in September and today we have another—1953’s Les squelettes ne jouent pas au poker by George Maxwell. The translation of the title is rather funny—“skeletons don’t play poker.” The art, by Jean Salvetti once again, would seem to suggest otherwise.
At 12:01 p.m. a bomb loaded into a horse-drawn wagon explodes in front of the J.P.Morgan building in New York City. 38 people are killed and 400 injured. Italian anarchists are thought to be the perpetrators, but after years of investigation no one is ever brought to justice.
Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States. The two week stay includes talks with U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as a visit to a farm and a Hollywood movie set, and a tour of a “typical” American neighborhood, upper middle class Granada Hills, California.
The Soviet probe Luna 2 becomes the first man-made object to reach the Moon when it crashes in Mare Serenitatis. The probe was designed to crash, but first it took readings in Earth’s Van Allen Radiation Belt, and also confirmed the existence of solar wind.
Two squatters find a container of radioactive cesium chloride in an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil. When the shielding window is opened, the bright blue cesium becomes visible, which lures many people to handle the object. In the end forty-six people are contaminated, resulting in illnesses, amputations, and deaths, including that of a 6-year-old girl whose body is so toxic it is buried in a lead coffin sealed in concrete.
