The copy of the Mail was dated Saturday January 1, 2000 and Hamptons’ books man Mike Barlow feels a maximum of a few thousand were printed in 1928 to publicise the Ideal Home Exhibition. He has come across one before in his career.
The timing this summer was perfect with all the articles, news stories and advertisements trying to prophecy the world of the first day of the new century.
Some of it is spot-on. The Mail mentions helipads, and, although there has been talk of a channel tunnel since Napoleonic times, in the 1928 Mail it was assumed to be, as it now is, fully operational.
Remembering this was before the television age, let alone international telecommunications, the report of the transmission of a live test match from Australia on a large screen in Trafalgar Square shows quite remarkable foresight.
There was a lot of interest in the copy at the auction (with the present Mailapparently entering the fray) and it sold to a private bidder for £55. Mr Barlow says an interesting copy of Mail of similar date might generally just take around a tenner.
However, the sages in the Mail newsroom got some things wrong. As you can see, there is an advertisement for Lyons’ teashops on the front page. Life without them in 1928 may have been unthinkable, but they have not lasted the course.
And just below the banner it says “Still For King and Country”.
King? I suppose, God forbid, there is still time.
Ideal Home 2000 – as it was in 1928
UK: NOSTRADAMUS made a career of it, as have a host of soothsayers through the ages, but many of them were less prophetic than a one-off special edition of the Daily Mail printed more than 70 years ago.
