Popular Nostalgia

Popular Nostalgia from the 1930s. Memories of events and items from popular culture recorded in words and pictures on the internet. Share, remember and get wonderfully sentimental…

lovely liquorice pipes sweets that are now available online and in store in all good sweet shops. sweet greetings from shildon This post was submitted by Sweet.

Snow White was the first full length animated feature to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first American animated feature film in movie history. If you’re in any doubt about how a woman should behave, check out the Disney 1930’s idea of female etiquette. It’s brilliant. Move like a ballerina and clean as though […]

“Santa Claus is Coming to Town” was written and first performed in 1934. The original was more instrumental than vocal. There is a version by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, which was one of the first covers. The best part about this song is the latitude for jazz and big band antics, which is […]

In the 1930’s, David Low drew Colonel Blimp cartoons for the Evening Standard. The Topical Budget, a weekly comic commentary ran for almost six years, from April 21st, 1934 to March 16th, 1940. One morning, Low read a Colonel’s letter to the newspapers, protesting the mechanisation of the cavalry and insisting they must wear spurs […]

896 ATHENS, Greece Dates: from 6 to 15 April 1896. Participants: 14 National Olympic Committees (NOCs), 43 events, 241 athletes (men only). Officially opened by: King George I. The Games of the Olympiad in Athens were financed by a donation of approximately one million drachmas from a rich businessman, Georges Averof, and by the sale […]

Some people chew it, some people smoke it, but no-one seems to sniff tobacco anymore. In our local pub (very oldy worldy CAMRA type), there’s a rack by the door filled with little metal pots. They have funny flavours written in old school lettering on the lids. This is snuff and you won’t find many […]

It was Queen Anne who first saw the potential for a racecourse at Ascot, which in those days was called East Cote. Whilst out riding in 1711, she came upon an area of open heath, not far from Windsor Castle, that looked an ideal place for “horses to gallop at full stretch.” The first race […]

1780 Diomed, owned by Sir Charles Bunbury, wins the inaugural running of the Derby on Thursday, May 4. 1784 The distance increases from a mile to a mile and a half which still prevails today, though from 1991 the offi cial distance has been one mile, four furlongs and 10 yards. 1794 The smallest fi […]

The Derby has been run on the Downs near Epsom since 1780 and is named after Edward Smith Stanley, the 12th Earl of Derby. The original race was The Oaks, named after Derby’s estate, and was exclusively for three-year-old fillies. The race became so successful that The Derby was created to find the best colts […]

Christmas would not be complete without repeats of this fantastic series of films. There are so many memorable moments, the Chinese orphan, Short Round, driving a car with boxes tied to his feet in Temple of Doom, the fight next to aeroplane propellers in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the infamous Venice boat chase […]

George Formby was born George Hoy Booth on 26 May 1904 in Wigan, Lancashire. He started out as a professional jockey because his father didn’t want his son to follow him into showbusiness. Once his Father died, George went into stand-up. He bought a ukelele from an actor for £2.50 with a bet that he […]

A comprehensive history of the Grand National from its official beginning in the 1800’s. From paintings to photo finishes and radio commentary to internet broadcasting. 1839 The Grand National was run at Aintree for the first time on Tuesday, February 26 and a horse named Lottery took the honours. Captain Martin Becher was unseated from […]

I love having mobile phones but there was a time before, when people could be unavailable, dates had to speak to the parents who answered the family phone and mates had to agree a time and place to meet. Landline phones meant that nights out on the town were a nightmare to organise. If someone missed […]

The whole reason we have 999 -the circular dial telephone took aaaaages to return to start before you could turn the next number in. People didn’t make so many phone calls because it was actually less effort to run round to your mate’s house or write a letter to your granny. I’m not quite of […]

I wasn’t there but I watched the film in history lessons like the rest of my peers. Down with salt taxes. Mahatma Ghandi’s philosophy made it much easier for the rest of the world to distinguish the good guys from the bad. Ghandi knew that if the Indian people were beyond reproach, international sympathy would […]