Word: londoners
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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From an unruffled "rather warm," the London Daily Express weather report rose to a blunt "hot," then staunchly maintained: "fine." For the three-day August bank holiday, a million Londoners migrated to the country and the seaside (where this week they were surprised by brief gales and showers). Throughout the heat spell, authorities had kept an eye on a below-normal water supply; the use of hoses and sprinklers was banned five days a week. In the London zoo, a lion decided that the best way to keep cool was to relax...
...opening of Death of a Salesman at the Phoenix,* which like most London theaters is not air-conditioned, gentlemen sweltered in their heavy dinner jackets, martyrs to the myth that London never really gets hot. In the House of Commons, the Serjeant at Arms permitted newsmen to remove their jackets (although honorable member's had to retain their coats and ties). To Playwright William Douglas Home Princess Margaret granted the privilege of dining with her at a London nightclub in his shirtsleeves. It was hot in other places than England. In West Germany, where the thermometer hovered around...
Then, for two hours, Admiralty officials in London waited anxiously, finally received a terse message: the ship had run the blockade and was already only 40 miles from the Yangtze's mouth. Two and a half hours later, the Amethyst signaled that she was in sight of the Woosung forts. Then she wired triumphantly: "Have rejoined the fleet. No damage or casualties. God save the King...
...into the channel astern of a Yangtze freighter. At 10:23 p.m., the Communists discovered the Amethyst in motion when the steamer ahead of her was challenged by flares from the shore. The Communists opened up with heavy artillery and machine-gun fire. The Amethyst returned the fire. In London, the Admiralty received a message from the Amethyst: "Am under heavy fire and hit." Ten minutes later she messaged: "Still under heavy fire." At midnight the moon set, giving the Amethyst an advantage of 7¼ hours of darkness. About 1 a.m., Communist batteries at the Kiangyin forts opened...
George Bernard Shaw, pixie, playwright and pundit, turned 93, ate some birthday cake and let go a thought or two on politics ("Stalin [is] the mainstay of peace in Europe") and his own advanced years ("Thank God, I've reached my second childhood"). London's Liberal News Chronicle concurred only in the latter view. "[Shaw]," it wrote, "is now the grand old man of English letters but not, alas ... of English politics. In that field he has said wittily a greater number of silly things than any intelligent man is entitled to say in ... a lifetime...