Quick Search
|
Search Results
You searched for: More Like: 'Effects of Chernobyl'
13 items
items as
Rob Roy statue number 2, Culter
960 The statue of Rob Roy at Culter - number 2, 1850-1926. A Rob Roy figure has stood on this rocky ledge high above the Leuchar Burn just before it reached Culter Paper Mills for around 150 years. It has become a tourist attraction for those travelling on the North Deeside Road at Peterculter, about 8 miles from Aberdeen. However, there is no historical evidence to support the legend that Rob Roy MacGregor left the gorge to escape his pursuers. The original figure is supposed to have been a figurehead from a Peterhead whaling ship and it was replaced in about 1865 with the carved wooden stature seen here. It apparently suffered damage before the First World War when local Territorial soldiers practised their firing skills on it. However, by 1925, the figure was in a poor state due to the effects of time and weather. A committee was appointed to secure a new stature and an Aberdeen woodcutter, David Graham, created a figure from a nine foot high block of Quebec yellow pine. It was unveiled on 3 July 1926. This figure lasted until 1991, when it had to be replaced again after being damaged by vandals. Cloud and Water Effects
2001 Waves crash over the South Breakwater of the entrance to Aberdeen Harbour in this George Washington Wilson image. The main concourse of the rebuilt station looking north
2640 In the century since the new station opened has
there have been many changes. 1923 saw the
Grouping of the Railways with the GNSR and NBR
becoming part of the London and North Eastern
Railway (LNER) and the Caledonian part of the
London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS). In
1948 both were absorbed into the nationalised
British Railways.
The 1930s saw mixed fortunes; new and
improved rolling stock was introduced including
more powerful locomotives. Conversely bus
competition was decimating traffic on branch
lines including Deeside and Buchan; suburban
trains ceased in 1937. During World War 2 all
the glass was removed from the station roof
and replaced by plywood to avoid the effects of
blast and comply with blackout regulations. The
sections were carefully stored under a disused
platform at Fyvie station until the end of the
war. Aberdeen Theatres: Fun on an Ocean Liner
3391 A group portrait of Dr Walford Bodie and his theatre company during a production called Fun on an Ocean Liner. This was a revue written by Bodie himself and first staged in 1924. It included a number of scenes and promised "gorgeous scenery" and "startling mechanical electrical effects". Bodie played a character called Capt. Waldon and his wife played Lady Henri.
Bodie (1869-1939) is in the centre of the image with the ventriloquist dummy. The woman sat to the right of him is mostly likely his wife Jeannie Henry (1869-1931), eldest daughter of David Henry (1839-1903), a road surveyor from Macduff, and Margaret Skene Henry (1843-1912). Jeannie performed with Walford as an illusionist and mind-reader under the name of Princess Rubie until her retirement in 1930.
Fun on a Ocean Liner was also known as Ocean Frolics and was performed twice nightly at the Palace Theatre in July 1928. It was advertised in the local newspapers as Walford Bodie's "Great Electrical, Musical, Revusical Extravaganza." Aberdeen Cinemas: Star Picture Palace
3409 A photograph of the Star Picture Palace at the junction of Park Street and South Constitution Street in the 1920s. The cinema was an undertaking of Bert Hedgley Gates in partnership with his wife Nellie and with financial backing from local businessmen. Bert Gates was among Aberdeen's most influential cinema proprietors. He would go on to be the founding managing director of Aberdeen Picture Palaces, a highly successful company that would play a key role in cinema exhibition in the city.
The ever useful Silver Screen in the Silver City (1988) by Michael Thomson details much of the history of the Star Picture Palace, known as The Star or Starrie, and the activities of Bert Gates. The cinema was converted from the former premises of the Aberdeen East End Mission. Its name was thought to come from a red-stained glass window in the shape of a star that was a legacy of its previous use. The Star's auditorium stood on the south side of South Constitution Street and its entrance, as shown here, was at 23 Park Street, underneath a block of tenements.
The cinema opened in March 1911 and showed a mixture of films and music. Bert and Nellie would stand behind the screen and add dialogue, sound effects and commentary to the silent films being shown. They also added topical references and allusions to well-known local figures. Both had backgrounds as stage artistes and their performances became a popular feature of the Star.
In 1913 the successful cinema was expanded, doubling its capacity, as Aberdeen Picture Palaces acquired the building and some houses to its rear. Thomson states that the remodelled Star was advertised as "Absolutely the Finest and Most Handsome Interior Out of Glasgow".
The Star had direct competition when the Casino cinema opened just around the corner on the north side of Wales Street on 7th February 1916. Thomson suggests that Gates responded to the Casino's popular and innovative cine-variety performances by programming his own varieties and mini revues. These included Miss Madge Belmont, "America's Handcuff Queen" and Birteno's Golden Grotto, "the most gorgeous electrical dance spectacle ever seen in Aberdeen - a display of serpentine and fire dancing by Belle Lumière, with marvellous kaleidoscopic colour effects".
The Star Picture Palace showed its first talkie, King of the Khyber Rifles, on 13th October 1930. In November 1932 the cinema suffered a fire caused by a dropped cigarette. The damage was relatively minor however and only put the Star out of action for a fortnight.
By the beginning of the second world war, the area around the Star was becoming depopulated as housing on Hanover Street and Albion Street was demolished to make way for the new Beach Boulevard. Bert Gates acquired control of the Casino in November 1939 with the idea of combining it with the Star to create one super-cinema that fronted onto the new thoroughfare.
Thomson explains that business was concentrated on the Casino and later that month the Star closed as a cinema for good. In 1939/40 it served as an indoor fun-fair and as the Boulevard Ballroom for the remainder of the war. The Star building was demolished, at the same time as the Casino, in 1971 to make way for a housing development.
Michael Thomson addresses the use of jam-jars for cinema admission in the first appendix to Silver Screen in the Silver City (1988). This includes an account of the Star Picture Palace from Ethel Kilgour who remembered going there as a child. Her description concludes as follows: "It was a great little cinema, jam-jar entry fee and all, and it was a form of escapism for so many children in a world so depressed between the wars".
[Information primarily sourced from Silver Screen in the Silver City (1988) by Michael Thomson] The Great Snowstorm of 1908
4179 Union Street showing the effects of the great snow storm that struck the city on the 29th December 1908. Mounds of snow have just been cleared from the pavements. The Execution of William Allan
172 This broadside details the life, crime and execution of William Allan. He was executed in Aberdeen on Friday the 10th February, of an unspecified year, for the murder of Alexander M'Kay.
The sheet gives an account of Allan's life and speculates on how he came to this unhappy fate. The account contains themes common to crime and punishment broadsides of bad company, alcohol and a disregard of parental authority. There is also at times an unexpected similarity to modern crime reporting: "We do not think that the annals of crime furnish an example of a murder perpetrated from so small a temptation as that which operated on the mind of Allan, who was aware, before he committed the deed, that the victim of it possessed only the paltry sum of thirty-five shillings."
One passage which describes Allan's appeal to the advanced age of his victim recalls the justifications of Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov: "He even arraigned the justice of his sentence on the ground that he had only taken away a life which would, in a short time, have terminated from the effects of indisposition and old age."
Allan is initially unrepentant and rude to the assembled clergy but then makes a last minute appeal for religious assistance on the morning of his execution.
Unfortunately, unlike Raskolnikov and Sonya in Siberia, there was no hope of redemption for Allan - at least not in this life: "After hanging the usual time, the body was cut down, and delivered to the doctors." Treasure 27: City of Aberdeen Meteorological Records
200 The state of our weather is a regular topic of conversation whether it's a lovely sunny day or a dark, dreich day. November brought the first snow of the season to Aberdeen in 2015 so we have taken this opportunity to look at historical weather records in our collections and see if our winters used to be warmer, colder, snowier, or wetter than today's!
This table of weather statistics for December 1925 is contained in a large volume of titled 'City of Aberdeen Meteorological Records'. The records were obtained from Aberdeen University Observatory, King's College by the Medical Officer of Health (MOH), Dr Matthew Hay, for publication in his Monthly and Yearly Reports on the Health of the City.
Although this volume covers the period from January 1900 until the Monthly Records were discontinued in September 1931, Dr Hay also included meteorological data in his earlier reports and the later MOH annual reports also contained summaries of the data.
The University Observatory was created around 1868 on the upper storeys of the Cromwell Tower. The Meteorological Observer was William Boswell until 1902. He was succeeded by George Aubourne Clarke the following year. Their equipment included a telescope, thermometer screen and an anemometer. The Observatory was one of the Government's Meteorological Office weather stations and was taken over by the Air Ministry in 1921 but closed down in 1947.
The data in each table includes temperature, relative humidity, rainfall (snow or hail is indicated by the letters S or H), hours of sunshine, and wind direction and velocity.
This table from December 1925 shows that there was some snow in the first and third week but both Christmas Day and Hogmanay were the two sunniest days of the month with between 3 and 4 hours of sunshine each.
Today we are used to regular weather forecasts broadcast and printed in the media. The official body responsible for weather forecasting in Britain is the Met Office. Their website at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ provides not only current forecasts and explanations of weather phenomena but also historical information on Britain's weather.
Check this link to see how many times there has been snow at Christmas in Aberdeen between 1942 and 2007. Aberdeen experienced 15 White Christmases as snow fell on 25 December. The likelihood of snow falling - and lying - in December has decreased in recent years due to the effects of Climate Change. Nowadays, Britain is much more likely to experience snow between January and March. |