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Veteran subscriber
Let me add my congratulations to Fortean Times for hitting (now surpassing) its half-century milestone.
After I addressed McMaster University’s “Velikovsky and the Recent History of the Solar System” symposium in 1974, Canadian Mr X approached and asked if I knew about Charles Fort. Told “No,” he urged that I get The Book of the Damned. I did and was immediately captivated. I learned about a publication being devoted to Fort’s research and musings, and subscribed to The News [as the first 16 issues of FT were called]. Correspondence with editor Bob Rickard ensued.
One highlight of my first trip to the UK in late 1975 was meeting Bob at his London flat where he graciously offered his Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) file to aid my early research of combustion conundrums.
(Also memorable: days later on New Year’s Eve night I gained access to Stonehenge with an after-hours, security guard-led flashlight tour, then being left alone amid the blue stones. Outstanding!)
With a collection going back to Issue 1 of The News (November 1973), I continue to find Fortean Times hallmarked with outstanding scholarship and exemplary writing by its contributors, who to this subscriber inspire awe and wonderment with every issue.
Here’s to the Universe granting FT many more years informing inquisitive generations about the curious, the unconventional, and the truly confounding; that is, forteana.
Larry Arnold
Director, PSI: ParaScience International, Harrisburg, PA
Letting it happen
The news pundits have categorised the recent Rochdale byelection Labour candidate, Azhar Ali’s conspiracy theory (that Israel allowed the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack to go ahead in order to provide an excuse for a fullscale invasion of Gaza), as typical of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
While it may have been used for antisemitic purposes, the theory itself is surely a variant of the old Pearl Harbor conspiracy: that FDR got wind of Japanese plans for a sneak attack on Hawaii, but let them proceed so that America could enter World War II on the Allied side. Public opinion in the USA up until that time had tended to favour isolationism. Coincidentally, both attacks took place on the seventh day of the month.
Geoff Clifton
Solihull, West Midlands
Noel Rooney comments: The LIHOP theory of 7 October (they let it happen on purpose) is indeed a descendant of other
