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Forgotten History

MorningAngel said:
I would have thought something that bad would have had a lot of national news coverage. If it’s anything like today the media loves it when something truly horrible happens.
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While it's not spoken of much now, at the time it did indeed receive huge coverage. The tabloid in which I read about it is a national publication, for example.

There's now lots to read about it online. I spent an evening on it a while ago.
The fire spread scarily fast and some people died where they stood. It was a death trap.
 
escargot said:
This happened when I was a young teenager. My parents took the Daily Mirror, a tabloid which covered the disaster in detail with lots of photos. I did of course read every word.

While it wasn't exactly local to me, the Isle of Man is close enough to be covered by the same regional TV news shows. We heard a LOT about it.
Altogether a solid Silly Season story. Like the Enfield Poltergeist.
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We were down in Devon - a long way off, but we heard the news. It was a talking point at my school for quite a while.
 
catseye said:
We were down in Devon - a long way off, but we heard the news. It was a talking point at my school for quite a while.
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It was huge. Remember, it was a month before we were back to school but it was still being discussed.

Was there 'People were walking about ON FIRE!' and 'The fire exits didn't work! There were bodies piled up!' at your school?
The gorier details were not spared by the red-tops.
 
escargot said:
It was huge. Remember, it was a month before we were back to school but it was still being discussed.

Was there 'People were walking about ON FIRE!' and 'The fire exits didn't work! There were bodies piled up!' at your school?
The gorier details were not spared by the red-tops.
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Yep, it was one of those things that we worried about a lot - escaping from fire, so the whole story stayed in the collective consciousness for a long time.
 
Thing is, there's a certain level of disaster that has 'legs' in national media - and little impact elsewhere - for a short while then the 'fuss' dies down when the official inquiries are established.
Herald of Free Enterprise sinking, Hillsborough, the BSE outbreak, Aberfan, and many, many more. The recollection of a tragedy depends on the generation consuming media output. This is why I support many You Tubers who 'specialise' in disaster documentaries - they inform and they give rememberance.
 
catseye said:
Yep, it was one of those things that we worried about a lot - escaping from fire, so the whole story stayed in the collective consciousness for a long time.
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The conclusion we teenagers came to was that when we were in a big building, the minute we heard a rumour of a fire or even caught a whiff of unexpected smoke, we'd be OUT of there.
 
Stormkhan said:
Thing is, there's a certain level of disaster that has 'legs' in national media - and little impact elsewhere - for a short while then the 'fuss' dies down when the official inquiries are established.
Herald of Free Enterprise sinking, Hillsborough, the BSE outbreak, Aberfan, and many, many more. The recollection of a tragedy depends on the generation consuming media output. This is why I support many You Tubers who 'specialise' in disaster documentaries - they inform and they give rememberance.
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I was too young to consume ANY media when Aberfan happened, yet I remember it very clearly - I was the same age as some of the children who died. I remember my mother crying and, even now, the name Aberfan gives me goosepimples. Some tragedies just strike home more than others for whatever reason. Just as I remember the Dunblane shooting - because my eldest daughter was the same age as some of the children who died, so I related much more to that than to many other disasters.
 
catseye said:
I was too young to consume ANY media when Aberfan happened, yet I remember it very clearly - I was the same age as some of the children who died. I remember my mother crying and, even now, the name Aberfan gives me goosepimples. Some tragedies just strike home more than others for whatever reason. Just as I remember the Dunblane shooting - because my eldest daughter was the same age as some of the children who died, so I related much more to that than to many other disasters.
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I was the same age as some Aberfan victims, old enough to follow the news and read the family tabloid's reports on it.
Can remember spreading the Daily Mirror out on the tiled floor to look at the middle page photo, possibly of the funeral with the line of little fresh graves.

Techy and I enjoyed The Crown on TV together but I made sure to watch the Aberfan episode on my own.
I was right. :nods:
 
catseye said:
I was too young to consume ANY media when Aberfan happened, yet I remember it very clearly - I was the same age as some of the children who died.
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Thing is, you might not've followed the media, but the adults around you would ... and kids are pretty good at picking up emotional reactions from others.
This is why I get frustrated when people say "I protect my child from horrible news!" A noble sentiment but usually doomed to failure. Better is to control the narrative and if a child asks about an awful event they'd detected somehow, the parent should carefully and thoughtfully explain the event - in age appropriate terms. This would also help the adult process the tragedy too.
 
escargot said:
While it's not spoken of much now, at the time it did indeed receive huge coverage
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Curious: until reading about the Summerland tragedy here, and recently seeing a mainstream news item commemorating the incident, I had zero awareness of the event.

And yet I've always soaked-up information regarding the Isle of Man (especially since the death on a motorcycle of a family friend during the TT races: that also happened in the early/mid 1970s, making my non-awareness all the stranger).
 
Ermintruder said:
Curious: until reading about the summerland tragedy here, and recently seeing a mainstream news item commemorating the incident, I had zero awareness of the event.

And yet I've always soaked-up information regarding the Isle of Man (especially since the death on a motorcycle of a family friend during the TT races: that also happened in the early/mid 1970s, making my non-awareness all the stranger).
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That's strange because Summerland was a huge story at the time; perfect Silly Season fare for the tabloids.
Whereas the annual carnage of the TT has hardly registered since the mid-70s when it was removed from the World Championships.

(I remember Giacomo Agostini leading the riders' boycott of the TT after 1972, on the basis that it was too dangerous. They were right and it still is.
Agostini is with us yet in his 80s. Nine-time world champion and 12-times TT winner Mike Hailwood died at 40 with one of his young children in a road accident, their car hit by a lorry making an illegal turn. I remember that too.)
 
My friend went on the course pillion with Mike; she said never again.

But what an experience once??
 
Ermintruder said:
Curious: until reading about the Summerland tragedy here, and recently seeing a mainstream news item commemorating the incident, I had zero awareness of the event.
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Yes I don't remember the Summerland tragedy. I think that I was on holiday in the countryside of Scotland at the time it happened. Really feel for those who lost loved ones, who had to go through that ordeal , or impacted in any way.

Can't help thinking that far too many corners were cut in the name of keeping costs down during the construction stage, and the fact that emergency exists were chained shut just to stop people creeping in with out paying, seems outrageous.

I have found a film of Summerland from 1972 ( no audio) on Youtube.

 
Was on the IOM a few days after Summerland, you could still smell burning miles out at sea.
 
There's also the Chatham Bus disaster ...

Frankly, when it comes to tragedies, there's too, too many. Important and landmark locally, to the rest of the country - let alone the world - they are 'forgotten', though they shouldn't be.
Rather than de-rail, can't we re-route tragedies and disasters from forgotten history? Plenty of both, y'see.
 
Stormkhan said:
There's also the Chatham Bus disaster ...

Frankly, when it comes to tragedies, there's too, too many. Important and landmark locally, to the rest of the country - let alone the world - they are 'forgotten', though they shouldn't be.
Rather than de-rail, can't we re-route tragedies and disasters from forgotten history? Plenty of both, y'see.
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Local to me but another tragedy I’ve never heard of. Another collection of errors that ended many lives.

Isn’t it usually good practice if you have to walk in the road to walk against the flow of traffic? So they can (hopefully) see you and you them. They might have stood a chance if they saw the bus wasn’t slowing.

And what kind of practice is it to drive buses with just sidelights on? Is it something they did in the war and got used to? (I’m not really sure the purpose of sidelights, surely you either need proper lights or you don’t.)
 
One: Walking into the traffic is recommended because the headlights should at least catch your face.
Two: It was the officers mistake not only to walk them with oncoming traffic behind them but also three abreast. In such circumstances, two abreast would've been better.
Three: the officer carried no light.
The bus driver was following the habit of the other drivers, in that they only used sidelights when driving down well-lit streets. It was only sheer chance that along that stretch, the light was burnt out. It was also misty and this might be a factor, as before 'fog lights' were common, it was advised to drive with sidelights only because the headlights would reflect off of the water droplets, reducing visibility.
I recall someone saying that as long as the driver had full visibility, you could drive on sidelights only if there was street lighting. Don't think this is a rule, though.
Unlike many other people responsible for a tragedy, the driver was utterly broken by the accident. He stood for the entire time in the makeshift morgue, quietly watching the grieving parents identify the victims - a form of self-flagellation, methinks. He turned up in court with his life savings to pay any penalty then and there. He never ducked or avoided his guilt. These are signs of a good man.
 
I know no better place for this:
https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/what-the-heck-happened-in-2012
Read the whole thing!

Something changed in 2012, but what?
I have no idea myself and find the article fascinating:

The answer is actually rather clear. For whenever I now see a graph plotting out something by years, my eyes now jump to a certain date: 2012. And, more often than not, there is evidence of some kind of fulcrum there. Others have also started to take notice as well: 2012 was a “tipping-point” year.
 
uair01 said:
I know no better place for this:
https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/what-the-heck-happened-in-2012
Read the whole thing!

Something changed in 2012, but what?
I have no idea myself and find the article fascinating:

The answer is actually rather clear. For whenever I now see a graph plotting out something by years, my eyes now jump to a certain date: 2012. And, more often than not, there is evidence of some kind of fulcrum there. Others have also started to take notice as well: 2012 was a “tipping-point” year.
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A superb article!

I find the `current age` we live in to be uniquely - shall we say - `challenging`, and, whilst some of this may simply be due to my advancing years, I suspect this feeling of having to respond to something unexpected must be widely felt among many age groups.

If I were to distill down the phenomena which promote this feeling of being` challenged` I would say that they are:

(N.B Mods: I am listing the phenomena, not casting judgement on any of them)

* The rise of the trans issue - and its counterresponse.
* The measures taken (mostly) in the West to deal with the pandemic and the public acceptance of them.
* The entry of Chat GPT and other A.I systems into the market.
* The mainstreaming of ETH UFO assumptions and viewpoints, to the extent that they are being openly discussed at governmental level.

Now, if one had kept one's eye on the ball in all the relevant areas here - e.g (in software) Chat GPT was not invented overnight but was in preparartion for many a year before that - then no doubt you would have seen how these things slowly evolved before entering public consciousness. For many of us though, they seem to have quite suddenly erupted fully fledged into public life and demanded our attention, even though they would have been considrered downright kooky just a few years before.

Can these things be traced back to the `fulcrum` `tipping point` year of 2012 or thereabouts?

Erik Hoel's article is ultimately cheering though. He makes an analogy between ouur own times and the post 1968 world of the seventies - when we were similarly depressed, cynical, running on empty and fragmented. Could be worse.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
A superb article!

I find the `current age` we live in to be uniquely - shall we say - `challenging`, and, whilst some of this may simply be due to my advancing years, I suspect this feeling of having to respond to something unexpected must be widely felt among many age groups.

If I were to distill down the phenomena which promote this feeling of being` challenged` I would say that they are:

(N.B Mods: I am listing the phenomena, not casting judgement on any of them)

* The rise of the trans issue - and its counterresponse.
* The measures taken (mostly) in the West to deal with the pandemic and the public acceptance of them.
* The entry of Chat GPT and other A.I systems into the market.
* The mainstreaming of ETH UFO assumptions and viewpoints, to the extent that they are being openly discussed at governmental level.

Now, if one had kept one's eye on the ball in all the relevant areas here - e.g (in software) Chat GPT was not invented overnight but was in preparartion for many a year before that - then no doubt you would have seen how these things slowly evolved before entering public consciousness. For many of us though, they seem to have quite suddenly erupted fully fledged into public life and demanded our attention, even though they would have been considrered downright kooky just a few years before.

Can these things be traced back to the `fulcrum` `tipping point` year of 2012 or thereabouts?

Erik Hoel's article is ultimately cheering though. He makes an analogy between ouur own times and the post 1968 world of the seventies - when we were similarly depressed, cynical, running on empty and fragmented. Could be worse.
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Could be a darned sight better too!
 
All that stands out for me in the year 2012 was we had a prolonged (almost a month) of rainfall - as we've just experienced.
At the time, our business made the majority of its income at outdoor events and several of these were cancelled, and those that did happen were 'washed out'.
Luckily, in the canine industry, most owners were resigned to taking the dogs outside in the rain, so we managed to scrape by. But it was touch-and-go for the survival of our firm. We certainly learned lessons that year! :)
 
I remember everyone thinking that the 2012 Olympics would be a disaster and the weather had been dismal as you say. Instead it was a triumph thanks in no small part to the amount of organisation behind the scenes which my workplace was part of. (And even the weather cheered up for a few weeks) Everything seemed hopeful for a few months but hopes were increasingly dashed.

Personally though I feel like the world started changing again in 2001 when 9/11 happened. It certainly got a lot more paranoid which set up some of the later trends. And in 2016 David Bowie died and it all went to hell.
 
I'm also reading this book, and there might be other cultural tipping points, downward:

Prozac Nation
Elizabeth Wurtzel
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/227603.Prozac_Nation?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=kfSMk95PED&rank=1

But of course, a peak moment in depression culture arrived with the tremendous success of Nirvana, whose hit single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a call to apathy. This song was so delighted with its passivity that its central demand was, “Here we are now, entertain us.” In fact, the band’s whole album, Nevermind, seemed to be a long list of the many things that they didn’t care about. Of course, rock and roll has had a long and proud history of songs devoted to the downward spiral of life, but Nirvana would seem to mark the first time this kind of punk music delivered both a number-one album and a number-one single.
...
Trademark Sub Pop T-shirts with the word LOSER printed in caps across the chest became collector’s items.

And this is nonsense of course, but emotionally it feels appropriate:

apz2wMRQ_700w_0.jpg
 
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