Friday 26 November 2010

Newspaper nightmare: The day without any news


According to today's Sun, scientists have pinpointed the 20th Century's most boring day - April 11, 1954 - when there was no news.

The Sun says: "It was the only 24 hours in the momentous hundred years with NO major event, birth or death. In a century that saw two world wars, space exploration, and the invention of the telly and the internet, the spring Sunday could only boast a general election in Belgium.

"There was the death at 69 of journeyman footballer Jack Shufflebotham, who played a few games for Oldham - but a planned coup in Yanaon, a French colony in India, failed to go ahead. The main birth was that of Turkish academic and microwave electronics expert Abdullah Atalar.

"Boffins in Cambridge arrived at the date after feeding 300 million facts into a new search engine called True Knowledge. Founder William Tunstall-Pedoe said yesterday: 'When the results came back, the winner was April 11, 1954. Nobody significant died that day and no major events apparently occurred'."

Mind you in 1954 there was no X Factor or I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to help fill the tabloid pages.

The Sun
has mocked up a front page from April 11 with "er..." on the front.

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