Yes, it’s that time again—we’re going to take some days off and go traveling. As always, part of the agenda will be finding more material to post, but there will also be some earthly pleasures mixed in. At least we hope so. Not sure when we’ll be back, but wherever we are we’ll start posting again regardless on Monday. If we don’t, call the authorities. Oh, and pop by and water the ficus. Thanks. 

We love Bond stuff here, as you’ve probably figured out already. So we were pretty excited to find this Japanese advert for Imai’s scale model Aston Martin DB-5, a car which appeared in the James Bond films Goldfinger, Thunderball, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Casino Royale. The painting is a lot more impressive than the actual model, but we could be convinced to buy it anyway, as long it’s equipped with a tiny ejector seat. 

The Los Angeles Police Department has apolo- gized to the family of Robert Kennedy and pulled from display items of clothing worn by the Senator the night he was shot in L.A. in 1968. The items—a tie, shirt, and jacket stained with blood—had been part of an exhibit hosted at the Palms Casino, and created for the 2010 California Homicide Investigators Assn. Conference.

The Kennedy family claims to have requested the return of Robert Kennedy’s effects more than ten years ago, to no avail, and called the LAPD’s official apology "insufficient." Department spokesmen claim to have been trying merely to put together a professional and educational display, not a “freakshow.” The exhibit does contain crime scene evidence rarely seen in public, including hundreds of photographs dating back as far one hundred years, but it also features sensational items such as the rope used to restrain Sharon Tate the night of her murder, and various O.J. Simpson artifacts.

Asked whether they would agree to the request made by the Kennedy family and return the items—a move that would comply with California state law regarding personal effects of murder victims—a spokeswoman for the L.A. County District Attorney’s office declined to answer in the affirmative about the potentially valuable collection, instead saying only that they were “looking into it.”

Above is a publicity still of Darren McGavin, star of the short-lived American television show The Night Stalker. The series ran in 1974, and featured the character of Carl Kolchak as a world weary newspaperman investigating macabre and supernatural doings in Chicago. Over the course of twenty episodes Kolchak tangled with a vampire, a mummy, a werewolf, and even a killer android. It comes across a bit clunky now, but at the time the series was acclaimed for its deft writing and humor. Despite the good reviews, the American public didn’t get it, and the show suffered from poor ratings that only got worse with each week. McGavin, feeling constrained by the character and format of the series, eventually asked to be released from his contract and the network granted his wish. But some creations are simply ahead of their time and The Night Stalker, which should have been forgotten forever, continued to attract fans and today has a fierce cult. Even X-Files creator Chris Carter admits the show was a direct influence. He asked McGavin to reprise Kolchak on The X-Files as a running character—a turn that would have been momentous for fans of the macabre—but McGavin declined and the dream team of Kolchak and Mulder never materialized. Darren McGavin, forever to be remembered as Carl Kolchak, died today in 2006. 

Photo of the nuclear test codenamed Easy, part of the series Operation Ranger, detonated at Frenchman Flat, Nevada Test Site, February 1, 1951. This was the first nuclear blast shown on television—a news program secretly focused a camera on the desert from the top of a Las Vegas hotel and was able to broadcast a distant flash. 

Photo of Lee Harvey Oswald on the cover of Life, published today 1964. Some people think this photo is fake. But Dartmouth College professor of computer science Hany Farid weighs in on this convincingly and his conclusion is the photo is legit. Great. Now maybe people can focus entirely on the laughable lone gunman theory. Just saying. 

Above, one of the most important photographic images of the twentieth century, a Pulitzer Prize winner shot by photographer Eddie Adams. On a sweltering Saigon afternoon, a Viet Cong officer is executed by South Vietnamese national police chief Brig. Gen Nguyen Ngoc Loan, forty-two years ago today. There’s also a film of the gruesome incident here. The photo galvanized the U.S. anti-war effort, but interestingly, Adams regretted taking it, saying that the circumstances around such a photo could never be adequately explained and Nguyen Ngoc Loan appeared to be a villain when perhaps he wasn’t. Such complex considerations are no longer a serious worry for war photographers. Due to Pentagon restrictions, it’s highly unlikely an image like this could now be captured. 

Telling children to kiss their little rear ends goodbye in the event of a nuclear attack was considered too harsh, so instead these Los Angeles gradeschoolers are being taught how to survive the A-bomb by taking shelter under their desks. They’ve been told that a nuclear bomb “blows up houses and makes the earth wiggle.” The shot dates from 1950 and comes from the Los Angeles Public Library’s collection of mid-century Los Angeles Herald Express photos. 

Photo of Chinese space capsule Shenzhou, aka Divine Vessel or Divine Land, after returning from space to a successful touchdown in Mongolia via parachute. The Chinese program progressed, with substantial Russian help, from unmanned flights, to missions carrying animals and manequins, until finally, on October 15, 2003, a Chinese astronaut was sent into space. We found this image and others at a French website here.

Five World War II propaganda posters, produced in the U.S. circa 1942.