100 years ago

Germany had now admitted the loss of the two Zeppelin airships, the L3 and the L4, which had been engaged in reconnoitring the North Sea. They had been overtaken by a sudden storm.

The official Copenhagen Meteorological Institute suggested that if the British weather reports had not prudently been stopped the Zeppelins would have received warning of the sudden barometrical change for the worse and would have abandoned their expedition.

The famous Danish flying man, Alfred Nervoe, said: “Zeppelins are useless, and there is nothing surprising in the disaster. The German admiration for everything gigantic alone has permitted the building of these airships to be continued, although the best German airmen have for a long time realised that the aeroplane is the better. I don’t believe that any importance need be attached to a Zeppelin attack on England.

These two Zeppelins cost over 1,000,000 marks. The fall of one millimetre of water alone means an additional weight of 4,000 kg (four tons), thus compelling the airship to land, and one shot from a machine gun would pierce the envelope and make a safe return from such a long journey an impossibility.”

 

50 years ago

America’s spacecraft Ranger 8 had hit the moon only 15 miles from the planned impact point, after sending back some 7000 pictures of the moon’s surface. Public release of the pictures was expected soon. The craft had taken the first pictures while 1350 miles away from the moon.

Mr Harris Schurmeier, Ranger project manager, said, “The Video signals, from the six television cameras, look excellent, and the pictures will probably be at least as good as those from Ranger 7 last July.”

The signals had indicated some very rugged terrain as Ranger had swept into the Sea of Tranquillity at ever-increasing speed. It was expected, by calculating from the angle of the sun, to figure the heights of the mountain areas.

 

25 years ago

The Government had been accused of failing the “acid test” of protecting the environment from sulphur dioxide emissions from power stations like Drax.

Shadow Energy Secretary Frank Dobson claimed that the desulphurisation programme at Drax was to be scrapped. He said in advance of a Commons debate on electricity privatisation: “The Government’s record over fighting acid rain is appalling. It has let Britain fall further and further behind.”

Mr Dobson said Britain was required by the EEC to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 1993, 40 per cent by 1998 and 60 per cent by 2003.