DRINK SHRINKFLATION

This is my tenth glass today. I guess smaller pours aren't a good way to cut down after all.

If you look around online you’ll read that this photo of Scottish actress Maureen Swanson holding a port or sherry glass was made to promote a show called, “Scotland Yard accepts the challenge.” But we’d never heard of it, and could find no references to it anywhere. Further research revealed that the original vendors of this image were based in Argentina, and down there a show called Scotland Yard acepta el desafío existed, and that phrase translates as above. But television shows and movies don’t always cross borders with their titles translated literally. Scotland Yard acepta el desafío was made in Britain, where it was The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre. “Scotland Yard accepts the challenge” never existed. It might be easier for the various vendors to sell this image if they get the title right. In any case, it’s from 1962.

Robbery and riches are fine, but this next part is what he really enjoys.

Above is a very nice uncredited cover for L’homme san nom, aka The Man Who Was Nobody, written by Edgar Wallace in 1927 and republished by Hatchette as an entry in its Collection L’énigme, or Enigma Collection, 1940. The main character here isn’t the homme—this is actually part of a series starring Wallace’s crime solving creation Marjorie Steadman. It was later made into an episode of the television series The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

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.

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 panting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

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”.

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.

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains nearly 2,800 stars.

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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