A piece of history I knew nothing about. Britain had a space program after the second world war. It actually succeeded before being mothballed.
The story of the Liverbirds, Liverpool's first female rock band that came up behind the beatles and had quite a run. Amazing and moving story. (via Kottke)
Two women reminisce about their teenage years in the 1890s. They were obviously better off than many of their counterparts of the day but it's still quite fascinating to get first-person accounts that go so far back. I'm also impressed by one woman's cycling endurance. London to Brighton and back on what was effectively a fixed-gear bike is quite something.
I knew the Channel Islands had been occupied during the second world war. I had no idea there were concentration camps on one of them. The UK government originally tried to suppress knowledge of it, but there's now a heated debate going on about how many people died there and if the reality of it all should be more openly visible.
A great write-up on the Bleep sound of Sheffield that had an important place in the history of dance music. I still remember the first time I heard LFO, I was blown away. Luckily, my speakers were not.
Rob Gordon, Warp co-founder and a supremely talented and important producer and engineer in the bleep story, remixed The Theme for its Virgin rerelease as his “bass statement” but no mastering engineers would touch it. One did, Geoff Pesche, but in order to fully capture the sheer depth of sub-bass on the record, he crawled under the mixing desk to remove its limiters. Letters of complaint flooded to Virgin, as ill-prepared speaker systems were blown and destroyed across the UK.
