Happy Birthday Orcadian!

The featured archive for today is the supplement to the 125th anniversary edition of The Orcadian. It appeared on the 15th of November 1979.

The Orcadian newspaper was actually first published on the 14th of November 1854 by James Urqurt Anderson. The Orcadian firm was already in existence as a bookbinding and printing service.

The supplement looks over the advent of North Sea oil and its effects on the island, the demonstrations against Uranium mining and the concerns of population drift. The most depressing section, however is entitled 'cost of living'.

Here, the author complains that whereas a first class stamp had been but tuppence ha'penny when the centenary edition was published in 1954, it now cost TEN PENCE to send a letter. It is further pointed out while a bottle of whisky had been about 20 shillings, a consumer was now set back by around £5. Further more 'A good, sound stone-built two-storey house in Kirkwall with garage, greenhouse, storage space and a biggish garden could have been had for a little over £3000 in the early fifties. The price today is much more likely to be in the £40,000 bracket.' Good lord.

Happy Bloggiversary To Us...

On the 4th of September, which fell on a Saturday this year, many historic events can be celebrated: it is the day in 1666 when the Great Fire of London wreaked its most extensive damage and, on the same day in 1884, Great Britain finally stopped it's penal transportation to New South Wales.

In 1964, the Forth Road Bridge became the longest suspension bridge in Europe and in 1981 a child was born who would grow up to teach the world that dancing about in public clad in little more than bits of glittery string was not, as previously thought, a bit odd, but actually a very good idea indeed.

It is a day of internet celebrations too. In 1998, Google was founded by two students at Stanford University and on the 4th of September 2009, this blog finally started to post in earnest. (We are conveniently forgetting the 3rd of September when we uploaded a bunch of pre-written blog posts without knowing how to back-date them.)

Hoorah! Happy birthday to us! Thank you for reading our sometimes informative, sometimes amazingly irrelevant musings this past year.

Our gifts to you, dear readers, are a)

A pretty picture from the back of A Stromness Distillery leaflet.

b)

A drawing taken from a letter dated 1806.

and c)

Some cool seals.

Happy Birthday Get Dusty!

This blog is one year old. Yes, the online archive only goes back to September, but posts were being prepared from April 15th onwards. (Let us just gloss over the fact that we did not understand how date posting worked when we began. Can you back date posts? Anyway....)

We will probably have an online birthday too on the 3rd of September like those kids who get half birthdays as well as proper birthdays (what's THAT about?). So there will be another opportunity to shower us with gifts. This would do nicely.

We thought about closing for the day and having a paintball tournament in the searchroom to celebrate and then remembered that this is an archive full of priceless documents and reconsidered. So how to celebrate?

To celebrate in a relevant fashion, here is another ridiculous 1940s ad for cold remedies which actually has a guy smoking, and the one above, which could not be used today simply because it it so completely repulsive. Both are taken from a 1943 Orcadian.

I asked my colleague to think of 'something cool' to put up for the blog birthday and was shown the awesome Kirkwall Charter which is pictured at the top of the page. It is kept in a special box and just look at the amazing seal on it! It dates from the 15th of May 1661 and it is a Charter of Confirmation by King Charles II in favour of the Burgh of Kirkwall.

We told three of our favourite celebrities, Stevie Wonder, Girl in a Striped Top and Terry Wogan that it was our blogging birthday and they very kindly travelled back in time and put together this little video for us. Guys, you shouldn't have!

Charter reference: K1/16/2