 Two flavors of femme fatale, identical health risk.  
Above is a rare double-sided Robert Bonfils cover, Lash of Desire with a flipside of Pillow Tramp, from the Dollar Double Book Company of Chicago, with both covers featuring a signature—a rarity from Bonfils. G.H Smith was aka M.J. Deer, Jan Hudson, Jerry Jason, Dusty North, et al., and Hastings was aka March Hastings, Laura Duchamp and Sally Singer. The art for Lash of Desire features a confident, challenging female figure, while Pillow Tramp presents a less edgy woman seeming to offer easy pleasures. But of course, all femmes fatales lead to the same result in mid-century sleaze fiction—disaster. A lot of Bonfils’ cover output was for various Greenleaf Classics imprints during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but these efforts from 1962 show him in more conventional form. Compare them to this front, this one, and this one.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1934—Queen Mary Launched
The RMS Queen Mary, three-and-a-half years in the making, launches from Clydebank, Scotland. The steamship enters passenger service in May 1936 and sails the North Atlantic Ocean until 1967. Today she is a museum and tourist attraction anchored in Long Beach, U.S.A. 1983—Nuclear Holocaust Averted
Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov, whose job involves detection of enemy missiles, is warned by Soviet computers that the United States has launched a nuclear missile at Russia. Petrov deviates from procedure, and, instead of informing superiors, decides the detection is a glitch. When the computer warns of four more inbound missiles he decides, under much greater pressure this time, that the detections are also false. Soviet doctrine at the time dictates an immediate and full retaliatory strike, so Petrov's decision to leave his superiors out of the loop very possibly prevents humanity's obliteration. Petrov's actions remain a secret until 1988, but ultimately he is honored at the United Nations. 2002—Mystery Space Object Crashes in Russia
In an occurrence known as the Vitim Event, an object crashes to the Earth in Siberia and explodes with a force estimated at 4 to 5 kilotons by Russian scientists. An expedition to the site finds the landscape leveled and the soil contaminated by high levels of radioactivity. It is thought that the object was a comet nucleus with a diameter of 50 to 100 meters. 1992—Sci Fi Channel Launches
In the U.S., the cable network USA debuts the Sci Fi Channel, specializing in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal programming. After a slow start, it built its audience and is now a top ten ranked network for male viewers aged 18–54, and women aged 25–54.
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