BBC, Bombs, and Perry Como

The BBC banned a song because listeners kept clapping to its lyrics. “Deep in the Heart of Texas” was written by June Hershey and Don Swander. Perry Como recorded the song two days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The song quickly became popular in both the US and the UK. It remained at the top of UK charts for five weeks during 1942.

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Listeners often clapped along with Como as he sang. The BBC soon realized this could become a problem, because workers in bomb-making factories might accidentally drop their bombs while clapping. So it banned its broadcasters from playing the song during work hours.

Read Old Newspapers and Magazines Online

Below are a few more ways to get your favorite reading online and for free.

Google News – Google News indexes thousands of newspaper websites from around the world and organizes news in clusters for easy reading. In addition to current news, Google News also offers access to stories published in old newspapers that you can search for free.

Google Books – If you are looking for an older issue of a magazine, Google Books might be the best place to find it. The magazines are scanned and searchable and can be read online using the standard Google Book interface. Decades worth of material are available, and the magazines are laid out just as they were when they were originally printed, including the original articles, index, cover, and advertisements.

Trove – The National Library of Australia has a large selection of newspapers from across Australia archived online that anyone may read for free. All the newspapers are completely scanned and can be viewed online in any modern browser, or you may download them as a PDF for offline reading.

Library of Congress – The Library of Congress has a large repository of historic newspapers published in America between 1880 and 1922, available as PDFs. Though the library has made available newspapers from 14 states and Washington, DC., these states contain some of the largest newspapers and thus the archives are still a very valuable resource. Additionally, the site has a database of records of all newspapers printed in America from 1690 to the present.

The Olden Times – If you are looking for a popular article about a major historical event, the Olden Times may be a good place to look for it. Although it does not contain entire newspapers, it does have snippets including popular news articles, print advertisements, and personal information sections such as births and obituaries. All content is free, and the content ranges from 1788 to 1920.

OMA – Old Magazine Articles contains magazine pages covering from famous historical events. The articles can be downloaded as PDF files for free. They have been edited to remove advertisements from the original magazines.

BBC – The 'On This Day' section of BBC offers an online archive of some of the most significant stories broadcast by BBC News since 1950. You can select any date from the menu at the top of the page, and view the news from that date as well as today’s historical news.

Checks Going Away in UK

Paper checks, or Cheques (as they spell it) are scheduled to be phased out by October 2018, according to the BBC. The board of the UK Payments Council has set the date in a bid to encourage the advance of other forms of payment.

The first cheque was written 350 years ago and the decision will be greeted with disappointment by some small businesses and consumers.

The target date for the closure of the system that processes cheques has been set for 31 October 2018, after the board described the payment method as in "terminal decline".

However, there will be annual checks on the progress of other payments systems and a final review of the decision will be held in 2016. "The goal is to ensure that by 2018 there is no scenario where customers, individuals or businesses, still need to use a cheque," the Payments Council said in a statement.

Personal cheque payment volumes reached a peak of 2.4 billion in 1990, and have since fallen steadily to 663 million in 2008.

Top Jokes from BBC

These were submitted in a contest for the best joke Aug 23, 2009.

Hedgehogs - why can't they just share the hedge?

I was watching the London Marathon and saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought, 'This could be interesting'.

I had my boobs measured and bought a new bra. Now I call them Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes because they're up where they belong.

I'm sure wherever my dad is; he's looking down on us. He's not dead, just very condescending.

Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. You know you're going to get it, but it's going to be rough.

To the people who have iPhones: you just bought one, you didn't invent it!

And considered the worst -

I'm not doing any Michael Jackson jokes, because they always involve puns about his songs. And that's bad."

I phoned the swine flu hotline and all I got was crackling.

Michael Jackson only invented the moonwalk so he could sneak up on children.