Not all rocks are old…. This exhibit at the Natural History Museum was formed in a coal mine in the 1800s, when the white mineral barium sulphate met coal dust. This only happened when miners were at work, so there’s a wider gap on Sundays, or “a calendar in rock” as the museum calls it.
And my last photo (for today at least) from the Imperial War Museum archive (© IWM H 11689), this is a photograph of Sheringham beach which was taken on 12 July 1941 by Captain Len Puttnam. The military had allowed the public to access the beach, but they were present to ensure that they didn’t stray too far, with the men of 2/5th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment overseeing proceedings.
This is Queen Victoria Street in London following an air raid that took place on 11 May 1941. This is another photo from the Imperial War Museum archive (© IWM HU 1129) and it was taken by the London Fire Brigade to record the moment. The lighting makes it quite an evocative photograph on what transpired to be the last night of heavy bombing during the London Blitz, although no-one in the image would have realised that. The Blitz had wrecked large chunks of the capital and this is evident at the bomb map at http://bombsight.org/.
A plaster cast of Megatherium, one of the largest mammals that has lived, and it’s effectively just a giant ground sloth. This cast was made in 1848 from two different skeletons and it’s been on display in the museum since 1850. I’m sure that, even at this large size, it still looked quite adorable and the animal could be as long as six metres in length from head to tail. They were found in the Americas and one of the reasons thought for their extinction around 12,000 years ago is human movement into the areas where they lived.
I will, at some point, stop faffing about looking through the Imperial War Museum’s on-line photographic album, but these are interesting photos (well, I think) of damage done to Downing Street on 20 February 1944. A fleet of 200 German aircraft attacked London, killing 600 people and doing damage to numerous Government and residential buildings.
Repairing the damage with ladders. This was towards the end of the bombings in London, the last Luftwaffe air raids were in May 1944.
An annoying hole in the ceiling of the drawing room and that isn’t snow on the ground, it’s glass. The work of a sentryman had to continue though, so they made a path through the glass for him.
The photographer at the time, Captain Horton, noted that although the window was blown out, the photograph of Winston Churchill was left intact.
And thanks to the Imperial War Museum – © IWM H 36080 © IWM H 36081 © IWM H 36087 © IWM H 36091 © IWM H 36092 © IWM H 36088.
Rummaging through the on-line collections of the Imperial War Museum (© IWM D 1574), I rather liked this photo taken by Bill Brandt in 1940. Brandt was born in Hamburg in 1904, but he renounced his German origins and moved to live and work in London in 1933. This photo is of Londoners packed into the underground station of London Liverpool Street and for some reason, I hadn’t realised that they were quite so packed in. Some of the photographs that Brandt took at this time were sent to the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to show him the fortitude of the London population. Very much a snapshot of a different time.
And another (© IWM D 1573), from the same station.
This is the subtle little memorial that was constructed in Kensington Gardens to honour Prince Albert, following his death in 1861. I’m not sure that many people have had a monument that took ten years to build and cost the modern equivalent of £10 million, although at least that was partly paid for by public subscription. The monument was unveiled by Queen Victoria in July 1872 and it was influenced by the thirteenth century Eleanor Crosses (here’s the one I visited in Waltham Cross).
The statue was originally covered in gold, but this had worn off by the early twentieth century. It wasn’t replaced until relatively recently, in the late 1990s when the regilding was completed. I think it’s all a bit much, but it is a hugely impressive monument. The frieze at the base of the monument has 187 carved figures of various painters, poets, musicians and architects, although the public aren’t allowed that near to it to look at it properly.
On the theme (well, I posted about one other) of recruitment posters at the Imperial War Museum photo archive, this (© IWM Q 33121) is another First World War recruiting poster. I wonder whether a similar campaign would work today if they needed men (or women now) to fight, would a call to protect Queen and country be enough? Hopefully we’ll never need to find out….
This is primarily just a post with photos of the Natural History Museum, the quietest that I’ve ever seen it. I was able to get an advance ticket, which are free but require pre-booking on-line, for the museum and they’ve limiting entries to keep it safe inside. The whole process was well-managed, and they were sending back people to the end of the queue who tried to get in early (I secretly really applauded this, as I don’t like it when people break sensible rules). This was also the first museum I’ve seen where the staff were actively enforcing the rule of people wearing masks inside, which meant they had to warn a handful of visitors who had taken theirs off.
There were no busy areas of the museum, there was plenty of space and almost endless amounts of hand sanitiser stations everywhere. Some areas of the museum were closed off, but there was still a sufficient amount to see. What the financial impact on the museum is I can’t say, but these must be challenging times.
This poster can be found on the on-line collection (© IWM Q 71310) rather than the physical displays of the Imperial War Museum, but it’s an interesting poster and I was intrigued by the reference to Lovain as I hadn’t heard of it. The town is in Belgium, better known as Leuven today, and on 25 August 1914 the Germans attacked the town and went on a frenzy of destruction, including wrecking the university’s library and destroying 230,000 books including over 1,000 incunables. The British helped to re-equip the library after the war, although it was destroyed again during the Second World War with over one million books destroyed.
Anyway, the poster is a reminder of how the Government wanted the Germans to be portrayed during the First World War, which was as a population who couldn’t be trusted. The allegations of firing on the sacred Red Cross and trashing cities certainly caused anger and concern amongst the British people, so I imagine this was a particularly successful campaign.
