May 26 1975

hi everyone

well, as some of you may be aware, i quite like, every now and then, having a look at a particular date in history for no apparent or given reason. it strikes me as today being as good a day as any to have a look at this day a mere 36 years ago.

it was quite a fascnating day, really. as we head towards Wimbledon, it is interesting to note that on this day in history one of, if not the, longest games in history was contested by Anthony Fawcett and Keith Glass (no, i had never heard of them either) duelled for quite some time on the court.

in regards of a subject always close to my heart, music, the number one selling single in the UK this week was the most splendid Stand By Your Man by Tammy Wynette. impressively, it kept Windsor Davies and Don Estelle out of It Ain't Half Hot Mum off the top spot with some sort of novelty song, along with a whole range of disco numbers, for lest we forget this period in history was one of the most significant in the rise of disco. Telly Savalas, he of Kojack fame, was a new entry in the chart at the same time too, with his inspired cover of You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling. it came straight in at #49 in the top 50. The Best Of The Stylistics by, oddly enough, The Stylistics was an number one on the album chart, closely followed by the celebrated Once Upon A Star album from The Bay City Rollers.

the written word would, of course, be as much of a passion of mine as music, and the world of publishing certainly had some interesting moments on this particular day. the cover of The New Yorker, one of the world's more celebrated magazines, certainly had an interesting cover.





an interesting oddity of The New Yorker is that it currently has more subscribers in California than it does in New York itself. well, why read about a place where you live, i guess!

Gordon Honeycombe remains one of the most celebrated and fondly thought of newsreaders to have ever been employed by ITN. he certainly was quite the celebrity in his day, and on this day in 1976 he made a rather famous appearance in the much treasured Yorkshire Post newspaper.





interesting publications, or if you will arrivals, on this day were not limited to the Yorkshire Post alone, of course. our friends, so to speak, in France had this rather interesting picture in their newspaper on this particular date.




this image, which is claimed to be of a UFO over the skies of Nancy in France, has become rather famous over the course of the last 36 years, featuring in numerous books pertaining to visitors from other worlds and probably featuring in the background in an episode or two of The X Files.

somewhat related to the above would be this.

it is good to see that the recent revival of Doctor Who has seen the show become as popular again as it was back in the seventies. of course, nowadays marketing for it is all computer games and DVD discs. we didn't really have that sort of tie-in available to us 36 years ago, after all we didn't even have video machines at home! instead we had comic books and novels as merchandising, and this particular book, published in May 1975, was one of an incredible five produced during that year. i have one or two of them at home, although i am not sure that i have ever had the pleasure of owning or reading this particular one. i am not at all sure who The Doctor would have been played by on TV at the time this one was published, although i suspect it might have been around the start of the era of Tom Baker.

in the world of cinema, two sensational films were released on this day in 1975, and sensational for rather different reasons. first off was the fantastic Monty Python And The Holy Grail. it was the first "film proper" by the Pythons, the first cinema outing, And Now For Something Completely Different, just being a remake of highlights of their BBC TV series for the benefit of American audiences.





what could i possibly say of this film that has not been said already? it remains as ludicrous and as funny today as it was on its original release, and has little in the way of equal outside of Monty Python's other films, in particular of course Life Of Brian.

sensational would be a good way to describe the Clint Eastwood film released on this day too. The Eiger Sanction took the preposterous premise of the novel by Trevanian (Dr. Rodney William Whitaker) and did it great justice in turning it into a preposterous film. both are ludicrous and entertaining, it has to be said.





and just what would the preposterous plot involve? well, in the film, Clint Eastwood plays Dr Jonathan Hemlock, an art professor, mountaineer and, get this, a retired government assassin. for reasons that i will not clarify, perhaps because the rest of this will speak for itself, he is coerced into climbing up Mount Eiger to assassinate someone by (and this is wonderful) an albino who happens to be an "ex-Nazi" and goes by the name of "Mr Dragon". if for some reason you have never seen the film, it is well worth finding a copy of it and watching. you will be quite surprised to see the even more ridiculous parts of the film that i have not mentioned here......


well, there's a look at this day in history for you. hope there is something that you didn't know above that you were interested enough to learn of, or otherwise i trust this flashback to 36 years ago brought back some memories!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!