by Malcolm Pheby | Jan 5, 2019 | History, Liverpool
Resourceful Liverpool manager Bill Shankly knew just what to do when the Big Freeze of 1963 buried the Anfield pitch under a thick sheet of ice. He called in a local tractor owner with a disc harrower to split the ice so it could be bulldozed away before a Fourth...
by Malcolm Pheby | Jan 2, 2019 | History, Manchester
The winter of 1962-3 was unique for Bolton Wanderers. They didn’t concede a point or a single goal – and never lost a match. But they didn’t win any either. In fact they failed to play at all from December 8th to February 16th. Bolton were frozen out – quite...
by Malcolm Pheby | Sep 26, 2018 | 1940s, History
Worshippers prayed in silence in St Anne’s Church as the first news of the Normandy landings reached Manchester on Tuesday June 6th 1944. Others crowded round loudspeakers as allied troops made their way into Northern France to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny....
by Malcolm Pheby | Jul 25, 2018 | History
Salford was at a crossroads when a cameraman flew over the city to produce a remarkable set of aerial photographs in July 1974. Some Victorian terraces still stood in regimented rows, while others were being torn down in the biggest slum clearances Manchester had ever...
by Malcolm Pheby | Apr 4, 2018 | History, Manchester
iNostalgia looks back on 40 years at Strangeways prison from the execution of Margaret Allen in 1949 to the riot of 1990. The longest jail riot in British penal history started just after a Sunday morning sermon in Strangeways’ chapel. About 300 inmates had filed into...
by Malcolm Pheby | Mar 7, 2018 | History, Manchester
To mark International Women’s Day, We look back at Manchester women of achievement from suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst to World War II spy and opera singer Margery Booth. In 1999, Time magazine named a merchant’s daughter from Moss Side as one of the most important...
