1929 Gallery

Holding up the R101

A member of the WAAC - the Women's Army Auxiliary Corp - holds up the R101 Airship, riding at her home mast at Cardington, Bedford. R101 was a British rigid airship completed in 1929 as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme. After initial flights and two enlargements to the lifting volume, it crashed on October 5, 1930, in France, during its maiden overseas voyage, killing 48 people. Amongst airship accidents of the 1930s, the loss of life surpassed the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, and was second only to that of the USS Akron crash of 1933. The demise of R101 effectively ended British employment of rigid airships

© Mary Evans Picture Library/TOM GILLMOR

Orient Express in Snow

The Simplon-Orient Express train, snowbound at the village station of Cherkeskoy, sixty miles from its final destination, Constantinople (Istanbul). The train left Paris on 29 January and was due to arrive at Constantinople on 1 February. Instead, it remained snowed up for ten days. A train travelling in the opposite direction was similarly snowbound alongside it for 96 hours. With no heating on the train, the passengers of both trains huddled together in the station buffet, passing the time by playing cards, reading, listening to gramophone music and dancing, including improvised performances by a German ballerina

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Anna May Wong in The Circle of Chalk

Miss Anna May wong as Chang-Hi-Tang dancing before the tea-shop keeper in The Circle of Chalk, an ancient Chinese lay translated into English by James Laver and produced at the New Theatre in London by Mr. Basil Dean, with a cast headed by Anna May Wong as Chang-Hi-Tang, a young girl who is sold to a tea-house by her poverty striken mother. Date: 1929

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans