vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Paul Darcy Boles’ All That Love Allows was published by Popular Library in 1955, but it originally appeared as The Beggars in the Sun a year earlier and was the second novel of a career that would win Boles a couple of literary awards. Popular Library was quite good about re-issuing serious fiction. This one is considerably improved by the brushwork of Rafael de Soto on the wraparound cover.
Yet another subset of post-pulp literature was the hot-rod or racing novel. Henry Gregor Felsen made them his specialty and cranked out at least six books on the subject, but many other authors tackled the genre also. Above we have a collection of twenty-eight covers with racing themes, with art by Harry Schaare, et al. A few of these came from the racing forum theroaringseason.com, so thanks to the original uploaders.
While serving time in prison for his role in a failed coup, Adolf Hitler dictaes and publishes volume 1 of his manifesto Mein Kampf (in English My Struggle or My Battle), the book that outlines his theories of racial purity, his belief in a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, and his plans to lead Germany to militarily acquire more land at the expense of Russia via eastward expansion.
The amusement park Disneyland opens in Orange County, California for 6,000 invitation-only guests, before opening to the general public the following day.
Legendary singer Billie Holiday, who possessed one of the most unique voices in the history of jazz, dies in the hospital of cirrhosis of the liver. She had lost her earnings to swindlers over the years, and upon her death her bank account contains seventy cents.
New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his fifty-sixth consecutive game. The streak would end the next game, against the Cleveland Indians, but the mark DiMaggio set still stands, and in fact has never been seriously threatened. It is generally thought to be one of the few truly unbreakable baseball records.
American Clara Adams becomes the first woman passenger to complete an around the world air journey. Her voyage began and ended in New York City, with stops in Lisbon, Marseilles, Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Honolulu, and San Francisco.
Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, which reads in part: “We think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of [nuclear] weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.”
