Fell down an internet rabbit hole and ended up here at the Vintage Pool Party group on Flickr dedicated to vintage swimming pool imagery from the 1930s to 1980s. It's mostly from 50s and 60s American motel postcards and I love this design aesthetic that includes lots of great examples of Googie architecture with its then-futuristic style.
Then and now.
An old 1950s (?) image of Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire brought up to date with the equivalent view in 2023.
I was able to find almost the exact spot where the original was taken from which meant it was fairly straightforward to combine the 2 images in GIMP.
Kenneth Gatland (later president of the British Interplanetary Society) on the BBC's Panorama program in January 1959. He's showing off a model of Project MIGRANT (Moon Instrumented Guided Rocket and Notifying Transmitter), an automated soft lander mooted for a Moon mission.
The gent with glasses in the first picture is presenter Woodrow Wyatt, who was previously and would be again a Labour MP in the UK.
An old photo from the 1950s of an unguarded railway crossing in Washington NE England. Brought nearly up to date courtesy of Google Streetmap and GIMP.
(The bus which stopped outside my house in the 1960s used to terminate here :) )
Brady Square in Washington (Now Tyne and Wear)
(Original photo: W.R.E. Lewis courtesy J.W. Armstrong Trust.
New Image: Google Streetmap) #TimeTravel#1950s#GIMP#Washington#England#NEEngland#Durham#Railways
The scion of a wealthy landowner family turns to alcohol and self-pity and slowly self-destructs after class differences force him to break off his relationship.
This popped up in my FB memories today. My family has passed down a Westinghouse Roaster Oven that as best as I can tell is a model RO-541 that was first manufactured in 1954. It only gets used once or twice per year to roast turkey over the holidays, always to perfection. Just don't ask what a 70 year old appliance does to the electric bill that month!
More info on the Westinghouse Roaster lineage from the 1940s and 50s. Quite the cult following:
The Library of Congress has a section dedicated to unknown film stills they have but don't know what movie it's from. Check it out if you're a film buff. (blogs.loc.gov)
I'm not much of a film buff but I did give them a look. A lot of the stills are actually pretty cool but I don't recognize a single one.