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Forgotten History

What non-officer would be issued with a side arm outside of MP's?
Medics (for self-protection only, under Geneva protocols). Dispatch riders (I've nearly convinced myself he's wearing a gauntlet on his right hand). Regimental Police (but minimum rank of Cpl).
 
Not at all!!

I think I may be able to identify the vehicle...assuming both trucks in the picture are the same type, I think it's a Chevrolet lend-lease C15 15cwt GS with the crew-cab missing.

chevrolet-c15-15cwt-gs-nsu-877.jpg


The side-slung ladder on the nearside rear quarter has a top-brace wire for use against telegraph poles or fencing, so it suggests an military engineering team.

The canvas tilt on the rear flat-bed is covering something large and heavy- it may be rope, hosing or cable, and there is what looks like a cable pay-out drum to the rear (too small for a searchlight....I think?)

None of the soldiers has a rifle close by, but the one sitting mid-rear has a revolver in a holster (yet he's not an officer....which is unusual).

The relative lack of webbing (apart from the revolver chap) or steel helmets makes it a certainty that they're not infantry, but probably corps. Not convinced that they're RASC (but they could be) also possibly RE, REME or even RSigs. Too smooth for Pioneers. And my instinct is to say British Army conscripts, not Commonwealth or Allied Free Forces uptakes.

They are in a rear-echelon position, away from active service, or it's very late in WW2. Colour-scheme of vehicles, and uniform type indicates European theatre, not Far East or Africa. The overall feel for me is that they're not in the UK....just far too casually-posed upon the vehicle (plus they've not got respirators handy, which was very strongly enforced, at all times, within the UK mainland...but became very-lax in Europe from 1944 onwards, when it became clear virtually nobody was using gas as a weapon)

I think they're wearing puttees, rather than leather anklets, which again makes it more likely to be 1942 or later.

Surprising lack of NCOs....but a snapshot in time is just that.

More points may jump out....
I bought an REME badge at the same time from the same woman ! .. I think that coincidence might not be a coincidence Ermintruder .. I can post a picture of that badge tomorrow if you're interested enough ? .. I didn't attach any significance to that badge maybe being linked to the photo at the time .. you might have nailed this !

edit: and thank you all for getting involved in this photo ..
 
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I bought an REME badge at the same time from the same woman ! ..

Brass or staybrite? King's Crown? Might've been a coincidence. Or linked provenance....please do post a picture of it, anyway.

I'm thinking late 40s or early 50s. They look too happy to be at war
Yes but no (by opinion). Mid/late 1945, maybe.

They are far far too casual for post-war regulars (or embryonic NS callups) and give off a strong vibe of being experienced WW2 conscripts not yet in possession of a demob date. Possibly after VE Day.....
 
Brass or staybrite? King's Crown? Might've been a coincidence. Or linked provenance....please do post a picture of it, anyway.


Yes but no (by opinion). Mid/late 1945, maybe.

They are far far too casual for post-war regulars (or embryonic NS callups) and give off a strong vibe of being experienced WW2 conscripts not yet in possession of a demob date. Possibly after VE Day.....
I haven't been able to find the exact same badge on google images to show you, or anything like it, but it's tiny, slightly less than the size of your little finger nail and is enamel coated looking with the official logo .. I'll try to post it here tomorrow mate ..
 
I'm thinking late 40s or early 50s. They look too happy to be at war.
That was my thought .. either before combat involvement or they never had to engage in combat .. they look too happy, that or they're John Wayne Hollywood styled heroes .. or they died in combat .. I need to go back to that old woman that sold me the pic and see if she knows anything more about it.
 
Not at all!!

I think I may be able to identify the vehicle...assuming both trucks in the picture are the same type, I think it's a Chevrolet lend-lease C15 15cwt GS with the crew-cab missing.

chevrolet-c15-15cwt-gs-nsu-877.jpg


The side-slung ladder on the nearside rear quarter has a top-brace wire for use against telegraph poles or fencing, so it suggests a military engineering team.

The canvas tilt on the rear flat-bed is covering something large and heavy- it may be rope, hosing or cable, and there is what looks like a cable pay-out drum to the rear (too small for a searchlight....I think?)

None of the soldiers has a rifle close by, but the one sitting mid-rear has a revolver in a holster (yet he's not an officer....which is unusual).

The relative lack of webbing (apart from the revolver chap) or steel helmets makes it a certainty that they're not infantry, but probably corps. Not convinced that they're RASC (but they could be) also possibly RE, REME or even RSigs. Too smooth for Pioneers. And my instinct is to say British Army conscripts, not Commonwealth or Allied Free Forces uptakes.

They are in a rear-echelon position, away from active service, or it's very late in WW2. Colour-scheme of vehicles, and uniform type indicates European theatre, not Far East or Africa. The overall feel for me is that they're not in the UK....just far too casually-posed upon the vehicle (plus they've not got respirators handy, which was very strongly enforced, at all times, within the UK mainland...but became very-lax in Europe from 1944 onwards, when it became clear virtually nobody was using gas as a weapon)

I think they're wearing puttees, rather than leather anklets, which again makes it more likely to be 1942 or later.

Surprising lack of NCOs....but a snapshot in time is just that.

More points may jump out....

I was thinking about clues to the specific unit, but top sleuthing on the rest.
 
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RE: The truck ...

The Chevy C15 is a good guess, but I don't think this is a C15. The C15 was a sort of semi-cabover design with a short distance from the seats out to the front.

The truck in the photo looks more like a 'conventional', with the entire engine bay positioned out front of the seat positions. It appears to me there's too much distance from the seat forward to the front axle centerline to be a semi-cabover C15.

The rag top and conventional layout make me think it's more likely to be a Morris CS8 or similar model British-built commercial truck (as foundation) - of which there were a bewildering number of variations during the WWII era.
 
Brass or staybrite? King's Crown? Might've been a coincidence. Or linked provenance....please do post a picture of it, anyway.


Yes but no (by opinion). Mid/late 1945, maybe.

They are far far too casual for post-war regulars (or embryonic NS callups) and give off a strong vibe of being experienced WW2 conscripts not yet in possession of a demob date. Possibly after VE Day.....
remebadge.jpg
 
This is in no way contemporary with the picture, nor is it a uniform item.

It's a commemorative (so-called) 'sweetheart brooch', or affiliation/fan pin-badge. But it quite a nice REME badge, and it might still show some link of present-to-past provenance between a recent former veteran and the (potentially) REME or RASC photograph.

The minute you mentioned "enamelled" I had doubts as to whether it would be an issued badge. The only item worn on British uniforms that has enamel upon it is an 'Order' (in the context of eg Order of the Garter etc when the wearing of "Orders and Decorations") and that is only worn in full-dress or best Service Dress (definitely not any order of working dress).

And I suppose another enamelled item theoretically still worn on (certain post-WW2) British uniforms is NATO command badges, in review order, for the likes of SHAPE or AFCENT etc (I blame the Americans. And the Germans. Everybody except the British)
s-l300.jpg
 
This is in no way contemporary with the picture, nor is it a uniform item.

It's a commemorative (so-called) 'sweetheart brooch', or affiliation/fan pin-badge. But it quite a nice REME badge, and it might still show some link of present-to-past provenance between a recent former veteran and the (potentially) REME or RASC photograph.

The minute you mentioned "enamelled" I had doubts as to whether it would be an issued badge. The only item worn on British uniforms that has enamel upon it is an 'Order' (in the context of eg Order of the Garter etc when the wearing of "Orders and Decorations") and that is only worn in full-dress or best Service Dress (definitely not any order of working dress).

And I suppose another enamelled item theoretically still worn on (certain post-WW2) British uniforms is NATO command badges, in review order, for the likes of SHAPE or AFCENT etc (I blame the Americans. And the Germans. Everybody except the British)
s-l300.jpg
Thanks man :cool: .. excellent work ..
 
Search for descendants of founder of Cayman Islands named Bodden or Bawden is on in Cornwall
By CGMikeS | Posted: April 07, 2017
Video (very poor sound :rolleyes: )

Inhabitants of a Caribbean paradise island have launched a quest to find the descendants of their ancestor - in Cornwall.

The Cayman Islands have launched an appeal to try to trace the descendants of their Cornish founding fathers with the aim of flying them to the beach paradise to meet their distant relatives.
Eric Bush, Cayman Islands representative to the UK, has asked anyone to get in touch who thinks they may be the descendants of a man named either Bodden or Bawden who left Cornwall in 1654 as part of Oliver Cromwell's army to fight in the Anglo-Spanish war.
He was one of 3,000 marines who sailed from Portsmouth heading for the Caribbean to invade Jamaica. He never returned to the UK but instead became the first recorded settler of the previously uninhabited Cayman Islands in 1658.
Forty-two years later, in 1700, his grandson Isaac Bodden was listed as its first official inhabitant. Bodden is still a common surname among Cayman Islanders, ensuring the legacy of their founder lives on.
The Cayman Islands' are now one of the largest British Overseas Territories with almost 60,000 inhabitants. Despite being separated by 4,600 miles of ocean, Cayman Islanders feel they have a bond with the people of Cornwall.
The populations of both places have grown based on fishing, farming, shipbuilding and salvage, and both have historic links with the golden age of piracy. Now the islanders, backed by Scott Mann, MP for North Cornwall, are trying to find Bodden's relatives in Cornwall.

etc...

http://www.cornwalllive.com/search-...-in-cornwall/story-30255759-detail/story.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayman_Islands
 
The Chevy C15 is a good guess, but I don't think this is a C15
I'm going to stick with it. Here's why....
The C15 was a sort of semi-cabover design with a short distance from the seats out to the front.
I believe that is exactly what we see here, considering the available floor-pan relative to the front wheelarch...
2017-04-08 10.31.57.jpg

(Note the compressed leaf-spring rear-suspension, and the wheel-base proportions (I haven't tried to do scale/proportionate measurements, but it looks quite like the C15 wheelplan)

The truck in the photo looks more like a 'conventional', with the entire engine bay positioned out front of the seat positions.
I totally-disagree with you (unusually). To me, it is a classic transverse engine vehicle, behind the troops upon it. Absolutely not a longditudinal engine....
2017-04-08 10.28.00.jpg

Box-front, drop-away, over-axle, forward control configuration. Note the bumperette and light (with convoy shades) again approximating to the front of a Chevy C15. All with the cab and windshield removed

2017-04-08 10.29.47.jpg

And look at the unladen (presumably identical) vehicle to the rear....this is so similar to the C15

f15a_02_1.jpg

Anyway, I trivially-support my case, and opportunistically interpret the images to suit my opinion, apologies. But that doesn't make me wrong....
 
Despite what recent remarks from the White House press spokesman might suggest, it is difficult to maintain that the death camp at Auschwitz is forgotten history per se. But this is an interesting project: photographs and potted biographies of the guards.

uploads%2F2017%2F2%2F7%2Fauschwitzguards_18.jpg


I picked out this guy from the Mashable selection as most embodying the stereotype of the arrogant SS soldier, but he is the exception that proves the rule - the rest of the faces would scarcely catch your eye if you saw them in different contexts. The following point has been made before by wiser people than me: these people were not monsters, they could perhaps have been our friends and neighbours. They could, perhaps, have been us. Or to put that another way: if we're not careful, we could, perhaps, become them.
 
They could, perhaps, have been us. Or to put that another way: if we're not careful, we could, perhaps, become them.

Look at Rwanda and Bosnia.

Neighbours hacking and torturing neighbours.


Ordinary, regular people. Absolutely no different from us.

It doesn't take much.
 
This is in no way contemporary with the picture, nor is it a uniform item.

It's a commemorative (so-called) 'sweetheart brooch', or affiliation/fan pin-badge.

A lot of old comrades associations produced such badges post second world war to wear on civilian suits and outer jackets.
 
Searching for an article about the management style of the Borgia's (not found) I found a few other interesting articles:

http://www.exurbe.com/?p=2176

Envision a scene in which two Renaissance men are hanging out in a bar in Bologna with a prostitute. Watching this scene, I, with my professional knowledge of the place and period, notice that there are implausibly too many candles burning, way more than this pub could afford, plus what they paid for that meal is about what the landlord probably earns in a month, and the prostitute isn’t wearing the mandatory blue veil required for prostitutes by Bologna’s sumptuary laws. But if I showed it to twenty other historians they would notice other things: that style of candlestick wasn’t possible with Italian metalwork of the day, that fabric pattern was Flemish, that window wouldn’t have had curtains, that dish they’re eating is a period dish but from Genoa, not Bologna, and no Genoese cook would be in Bologna because feud bla bla bla. So much we know. But a person from the period would notice a thousand other things: that nobody made candles in that exact diameter, or they butchered animals differently so that cut of steak is the wrong shape, or no bar of the era would have been without the indispensable who-knows-what: a hat-cleaning lady, a box of kittens, a special shape of bread. All historical scenes are wrong, as wrong as a scene set now would be which had a classy couple go to a formal steakhouse with paper menus and an all-you-can-eat steak buffet. All the details are right, but the mix is wrong.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/...scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=ucry20

Pietro Giannone (1791–1872) was an Italian poet and patriot, a friend and associate of Giuseppe Mazzini. In his last years, he wrote a secret poem using unusual symbols. For nearly 150 years, the poem resisted decryption attempts, but the code has recently been broken and recovered: a mix of monoalphabetic, digraphic, trigraphic signs, polyphones, and a little repertory. Some serious (but useful) flaws made decryption possible.

If you could help me - I'm searching for the article that described that high bosses (Borgia, Maffia etc.) will try to avoid making any decisions but try to leave that to others.
 
I've just watched
Rome's Sunken Secrets
on Ch4 (No doubt it will be on 4oD later.)

Review
by Gill Crawford
Back in ancient Rome, when the rulers and shakers wanted to kick back and get away from the city, they headed south to the Bay of Naples and the holiday resort of Baiae. It sounds like a fun place: as one historian here says, “It was absolutely a place of pleasure and debauchery.” The emperor Nero was a frequent visitor, but also plotted his mother’s murder here.

Its very position led to Baiae’s downfall: not far from Pompeii, it’s part of a hugely active geological area, and by the end of the Roman era, 50 per cent of it had sunk beneath the waves of the Bay. But there’s still plenty to see, as archaeologists and divers seek to understand this ancient landscape of luxurious villas, sunken statues and extravagant architecture.

Summary
Documentary exploring the underwater ruins of Baiae, an ancient Roman city located in the modern-day Bay of Naples, which in its time was an exclusive retreat for the wealthiest and most influential of the empire's citizens. A team of historians and volcanologists examine the relics that have been uncovered from the city and investigate the reasons why it sank. Baiae was located in a volcanic landscape, which provided a supply of hot water and steaming sulphur baths - but also led to the city's destruction.

http://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/fndjs4/romes-sunken-secrets

Not all the history is forgotten, but underwater archeology has shed more light on what actually went on. Apparently the Romans invented fish farming and oyster fisheries. (I vaguely recall that oyster farming in Cornwall was introduced by the Romans.) Their engineering was impressive too, acquaducts and Concrete domes.
 
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I've just watched
Rome's Sunken Secrets
on Ch4 (No doubt it will be on 4oD later.)

Review
by Gill Crawford
Back in ancient Rome, when the rulers and shakers wanted to kick back and get away from the city, they headed south to the Bay of Naples and the holiday resort of Baiae. It sounds like a fun place: as one historian here says, “It was absolutely a place of pleasure and debauchery.” The emperor Nero was a frequent visitor, but also plotted his mother’s murder here.

Its very position led to Baiae’s downfall: not far from Pompeii, it’s part of a hugely active geological area, and by the end of the Roman era, 50 per cent of it had sunk beneath the waves of the Bay. But there’s still plenty to see, as archaeologists and divers seek to understand this ancient landscape of luxurious villas, sunken statues and extravagant architecture.

Summary
Documentary exploring the underwater ruins of Baiae, an ancient Roman city located in the modern-day Bay of Naples, which in its time was an exclusive retreat for the wealthiest and most influential of the empire's citizens. A team of historians and volcanologists examine the relics that have been uncovered from the city and investigate the reasons why it sank. Baiae was located in a volcanic landscape, which provided a supply of hot water and steaming sulphur baths - but also led to the city's destruction.

http://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/fndjs4/romes-sunken-secrets

Not all the history is forgotten, but underwater archeology has shed more light on what actually went on. Apparently the Romans invented fish farming and oyster fisheries. (I vaguely recall that oyster farming in Cornwall was introduced by the Romans.) Their engineering was impressive too, acquaducts and Concrete domes.
Just watching a recording of this now. Fascinating.

As soon as I saw the statuary and lack of temples I said Vegas. Within minutes an archaeologist said "what went on in Baiae stayed in Baiae" nice to be right just once!

Edit: added

And can it be that any sudden and possibly volcanic loss of Baiae fed the idea of heavenly retribution against idle leisure and pleasure?
 
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Even though this happened within my lifetime, I don't think I've heard of this before:
Britain's 'big bang' in Heligoland, 70 years on
By Kevin Connolly BBC News, Heligoland
Video: 1m 30s.

Brexit may have triggered a political earthquake in Europe, but 70 years ago the UK sent real shockwaves across the seas with the largest non-nuclear explosion of that era.

As one of the four victorious allied powers after World War Two, Britain was governing a large area of occupied Germany.
The British sector included the tiny island of Heligoland, which had long been a source of diplomatic tension between the two countries.
So, when in 1947 the British needed a safe place to dispose of thousands of tonnes of unexploded ammunition, Heligoland must have seemed an obvious choice.
The code-name for the plan combined the British flair for understatement with the military taste for the literal-minded; it was to be called Operation Big Bang.

Heligoland had been a German naval fortress, and historian Jan Rueger, author of Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, says Operation Big Bang was designed by the British to make a big point.
"They're very clear that there's a symbolic side to this [operation] and that is the German tradition of militarism," he explains.
"There's a sense that Prussian militarism and its threat to Britain has to end and that's very much how Operation Big Bang is received in Britain."

The operation was carefully stage-managed - the old black and white pictures even include a close-up of a Royal Navy officer's finger triggering the blast. Aerial footage shows the entire horizon erupting in a huge grey curtain of mud, sand and rock.
For the Royal Navy and the British Army of Occupation it was mission accomplished.

For the people of Heligoland it felt very different.
Europe in 1946 and 1947 was in chaos, with millions of displaced and dispossessed families drifting between camps or sheltering in ruined buildings.
The island had been evacuated during the war and many Heligolanders were living in exile in the coastal city of Cuxhaven about 60km (37 miles) to the south.

Olaf Ohlsen, who was 11 years old in 1947, gathered with the rest of the exiled population on the cliffs to listen for the sound of the explosion.
Few people in history can have lived through such a moment, standing at the edge of sea knowing that they would hear but not see an explosion that they knew would destroy their homes.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39590752
 
I was recently talking with the business manager of a local school that was commissioned in the late 1940s and opened in the early 1950s (large brick built secondary modern design).

As we discussed the design of the school - typical long corridors with classrooms off the side, he mentioned that the design of most of these schools was based around quick conversion to hospital use in the event of a nuclear attack or invasion. The classrooms (or potential hospital wards) in particular were not connected to each other to prevent cross infection.

I’d not heard this before and a quick google isn’t bringing up anything of note. Has anyone heard anything similar?

My high school in Maryland was like that!
50s construction, certified fallout shelter underneath the rather large auditorium. It would make sense that the classrooms could be repurposed like that; certainly it was unlike the more recent elementary school (whose classrooms were subdivided by thin internal walls that didn't actually reach the ceiling for some reason).
 
This is the rusting little fishing boat that sparked the Falklands War
By WMNAGreenwood | Posted: April 20, 2017

15964753-large.jpg


The rusting hulk of the former fishing vessel the Viola sits in a snow swept harbour in the Falkland Islands – belying a long and fascinating history.
It is difficult to imagine how the unassuming vessel managed to sink a U-boat when it first saw military action during the First World War, harder still to work out her role in sparking the Falklands War 35 years ago.
For almost 50 years the British trawler that once battled German U-boats has lain neglected in the harbour in South Georgia, her part in history forgotten.

But now a band of volunteers aim to return Viola, the world’s oldest steam trawler, to her original port.
One of those behind the campaign is former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who announced on Tuesday that he is quitting politics.
The Hull West And Hessle MP has been helping raise the funds to bring Viola home and told The Mirror: “Viola epitomises the spirit Britain showed in 1914.
“Like so many trawlers, she and her men did the most dangerous of jobs. Bringing her back would be like bringing back a First World War heroine. She is part of our country’s history.”

Built in 1906, Viola trawled the North Sea until 1914, when she was requisitioned for duty in the First World War and the crew turned to catching German U-boats and sweeping for mines.
PM Herbert Asquith had told his admirals to save Royal Navy warships for the battle with the Imperial Germany Navy, and ordered the use of trawlers to patrol the British shoreline.
Fitted with a 12-pounder gun, Viola joined His Majesty’s Armed Trawlers and was quickly drafted in for minesweeping duties – one of the first vessels equipped with anti-submarine weapons and hydrophones to listen for the U-Boats.
Skippered by Charles Allum, a Hull-based captain, the crew proved they were as skilled with depth charges as they were with nets.

On August 13, 1918, on a patrol with other trawlers, they sighted a U-boat periscope. With another ship, the John Brooker, Viola hunted down the sub, which had sunk 18 Allied merchant ships. It was then sunk by two depth charges dropped by HMS Landrail.

Weeks later, the trawler was patrolling off Northumberland, when a German submarine, UB-115, was spotted by an airship. Viola destroyed her, no doubt saving many British lives as a result.

Historian Dr Robb Robinson, of Hull University, believes Viola’s homecoming is a perfect way to honour the men who found themselves serving aboard.
He says: “You could visit many of the major exhibitions in London and never realise that 3,000 fishing vessels and more than 39,000 fishermen were on the frontline of the war against mines and U-boats in what was known as the Auxiliary Patrol. Many of these fishing vessels were involved in what were almost pitched battles just off our coast.”

etc...

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/thi...alklands-war/story-30282935-detail/story.html
 
The fascinating hidden history of London's lost rivers
Tom Bolton
20 April 2017 • 2:30pm

London is usually seen as a one-river city, just big old Father Thames. The city breathes with the rise and fall of its tide, and for centuries the Thames has posed patiently for tourist drawings, etchings and photos. But what of London’s other rivers, the capital’s unseen waterways? Twenty-one tributaries flow to the Thames within the spread of Greater London, and that is just counting the main branches. Once tributaries, and tributaries of tributaries, are included the total moves beyond numbers into the realms of conjecture.

Many of these rivers flow quietly above ground, in plain sight but generally unnoticed beyond their neighbourhoods. Their enticing names echo London’s rural past – the Crane, the Darent, the Mutton Brook, the Pool River – or carry a whiff of the exotic – the Ching, the Moselle, the Quaggy, the Silk Stream. These rivers go about their business forgotten in the background, but many inner London waterways have been deliberately hidden. London’s landscape was shaped by the hills and valleys these rivers created, but as the city grew they began to get in the way and were buried, bit by bit, under layers of streets and houses.

London once needed all the rivers it could get: for drinking water, for harbours and wharves, for mills, for tanneries, and for sluicing away waste. The rivers were London’s sewage system long before any system was conceived, but even tiny medieval London was too much for any stream to cope with. The Walbrook, flowing through the heart of the City of London, was mostly paved over in the 1460s; it was considered a filthy nuisance choked with refuse. London’s origins are deep in the Walbrook, the river around which the Romans founded the city. The debris dug from the river – hoes and ploughshares, chisels and saws, scalpels and spatulas, the heads of forgotten gods and a collection of 48 human skulls tell the earliest London tales.

As London began to grow at the end of the 18th century, and then to mushroom beyond reason during the 19th century, the rivers became a big problem. Floods, filth, stench and disease put off Georgian and Victorian house-buyers. In Mayfair, the Tyburn was tucked away under mews. In West Norwood, the Effra was buried deep under grids of new Victorian villas.

The Fleet was legendarily filthy. Redesigned as a Venetian-style canal by Christopher Wren after the Fire of London, it was quickly overtaken by grim reality. Jonathan Swift, in 1710, wrote about the Fleet filled with “the sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts and blood.” A few years later Alexander Pope described how “Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams / Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to the Thames.” It is no surprise then that the lower Fleet was culverted in huge storm sewer tunnels where it has remained ever since. Yet before the river became more trouble than it was worth, it was a crucial route in as well as out. Everything from Welsh cheese to coals from Newcastle arrived at the Fleet wharves, and even the stones for Old St. Paul’s Cathedral were unloaded here.

The rivers may be hidden but they are far from gone. It is very hard to stop a river from flowing, so they have merely been diverted into the sewer system, often as part of Joseph Bazalgette’s monumental tunnelling programme during the 1860s and 1870s. They can still be seen if you know where to look, flowing through culverts and under gratings. Sometimes they are hidden in plain sight. The Hampstead and Highgate Ponds are former reservoirs created by damming two streams that form the Fleet. Regent’s Park Lake was originally fed by the Tyburn, while the Serpentine was landscaped from the Westbourne in 1731 for the benefit of George II’s consort, Queen Caroline. Unfortunately the sewage problem eventually rendered both rivers unsuitable for ornamental ponds, and they were diverted away.

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/d...ondon-lost-underground-rivers-hidden-history/
 
Even though this happened within my lifetime, I don't think I've heard of this before:
Britain's 'big bang' in Heligoland, 70 years on
By Kevin Connolly BBC News, Heligoland
Video: 1m 30s.

Brexit may have triggered a political earthquake in Europe, but 70 years ago the UK sent real shockwaves across the seas with the largest non-nuclear explosion of that era.

As one of the four victorious allied powers after World War Two, Britain was governing a large area of occupied Germany.
The British sector included the tiny island of Heligoland, which had long been a source of diplomatic tension between the two countries.
So, when in 1947 the British needed a safe place to dispose of thousands of tonnes of unexploded ammunition, Heligoland must have seemed an obvious choice.
The code-name for the plan combined the British flair for understatement with the military taste for the literal-minded; it was to be called Operation Big Bang.

Heligoland had been a German naval fortress, and historian Jan Rueger, author of Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, says Operation Big Bang was designed by the British to make a big point.
"They're very clear that there's a symbolic side to this [operation] and that is the German tradition of militarism," he explains.
"There's a sense that Prussian militarism and its threat to Britain has to end and that's very much how Operation Big Bang is received in Britain."

The operation was carefully stage-managed - the old black and white pictures even include a close-up of a Royal Navy officer's finger triggering the blast. Aerial footage shows the entire horizon erupting in a huge grey curtain of mud, sand and rock.
For the Royal Navy and the British Army of Occupation it was mission accomplished.

For the people of Heligoland it felt very different.
Europe in 1946 and 1947 was in chaos, with millions of displaced and dispossessed families drifting between camps or sheltering in ruined buildings.
The island had been evacuated during the war and many Heligolanders were living in exile in the coastal city of Cuxhaven about 60km (37 miles) to the south.

Olaf Ohlsen, who was 11 years old in 1947, gathered with the rest of the exiled population on the cliffs to listen for the sound of the explosion.
Few people in history can have lived through such a moment, standing at the edge of sea knowing that they would hear but not see an explosion that they knew would destroy their homes.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39590752


Have just noticed this post – concerning somewhere which I find decidedly interesting. It so happens that I’d heard of the 1947 Heligoland “Big Bang", from the book Offshore by author and TV personality Ben Fogle. To be frank, I mostly find this chap an annoying saccharine / gooey twit; but he’s a big fan of islands, and has written a couple of books on the theme, including the abovementioned – which books contain some, for me, worthwhile stuff. His chapter on Heligoland, I found fascinating.

Things derived mostly therefrom, to supplement rynner2 ’s post and its BBC article link: in World War 2, Heligoland’s inhabitants stayed in place on their island until very late indeed in the war – when the island was devastatingly attacked by over 1,000 Allied bombers on April 18th / 19th 1945 (coincidentally or otherwise, exactly two years before the Big Bang). The civilian population survived via protection in rock shelters; but with the settlement effectively destroyed, they were immediately evacuated to the German mainland. It would appear that the island was used by Britain between 1945 and 1952, as a site for assorted “long-range” military doings -- involving inter alia, chemical weapons and nuclear-associated experiments – of which the Big Bang was only the most spectacular and dramatic instance.

The island was returned to German control, and the inhabitants allowed to go back to it, in March 1952. A remarkable job has been done thenceforth, of rebuilding and making the place habitable again.

According to Fogle, in the First World War the Heligolanders – British subjects until a quarter-century previously, with their loyalty to Germany reckoned doubtful – were evacuated and put in internment camps in Germany; they went back home after the end of the war. BBC article says that Britain “gifted” Heligoland to Germany in 1890: one understands that in fact, this was part of a deal between the nations – we swopped Heligoland for areas of East Africa, including Zanzibar, which had up to then been claimed by Germany. This arrangement caused controversy in Britain at the time, with some seeing it as a betrayal on our part, of the islanders. Those were Queen Victoria’s sentiments; she’s on record thus: “These people have always been very loyal and it is a shame to hand them over to an unscrupulous despotic government like the Germans’ without first consulting them”.

From what I gather, Heligoland nowadays sounds like a fascinating place – re both wreckage from wartime-and-after, and what has been reclaimed and rebuilt. Some 2,000 inhabitants, who appear to be tough characters with an independent streak, seeing their island as a would-be mini-nation of its own. The island’s economy would seem chiefly based on tourism (a duty-free-shopping Mecca; also, a wonderful place for birdwatchers); and fishing, especially for lobsters. I’d like to visit the place...
 
From what I gather, Heligoland nowadays sounds like a fascinating place
Oh, for definite. I'd very much like to visit Heligoland. It seems to have had a serial experience of varied unfair extreme treatment for centuries.
 
Oh, for definite. I'd very much like to visit Heligoland. It seems to have had a serial experience of varied unfair extreme treatment for centuries.


Not that the islanders themselves have necessarily always been angels. Wiki tells us re times prior to the last couple of centuries, that the island’s traditional economic activities included fishing, hunting birds and seals, and wrecking...

And Hel(i)goland gets a mention in a ballad by Longfellow:

www.bartleby.com/270/3/437.html

From the above, old Othere – going by his activities vis-à-vis cetaceans and pinnipeds – would seem not to have been a friend of the natural environment.
 
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