And finally… A look back at the main news from December 1967 as we come to the end of our 50th anniversary year.
We have enjoyed looking back to 1967, as we celebrate our 50 years in business. We may have said it before but it is genuinely fascinating how many similarities we have discovered as we look at old news archives to find out what the world looked like when Evans Weir was established. Back in 1967 we were attempting to get into Europe and into space. Fast forward 50 years and Europe has now been fully explored and we’ve decided against going any further! As to space travel we now long to explore it in more detail and even sent a local chap to investigate!
There is so much we could have covered every month and we must thank the BBC and Wikipedia for their wonderful archives which have helped us tremendously. We end our review of the year with several firsts, so, in true news fashion, here’s our ‘and finally…’
We start our Christmas look back at the news with an example of the advances in medicine over the 50 years that have passed. Earlier this month (Dec 2017) we learned that Charlie Douthwaite, the youngest patient on the UK’s transplant list at just 8-weeks of age, had a life-saving nine-hour heart operation after a donor heart was found for him. Looking back to December 1967 we find Dr Christiaan Barnard and a team of surgeons carrying out the very first operation of its kind at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. When Louis Washkansky received Denise Darvall’s heart in the early hours of December 3rd, little did anyone know that the concept would become almost routine and be able to bring hope to the parents of tiny babies just 50 years later.
As we settle down with the Radio Times to plan our Christmas viewing, it’s worth noting that in 1967 we were only just witnessing the introduction of colour broadcasting. Having tested the concept of broadcasting in colour at Wimbledon in July 1967, BBC2 moved to full time colour television when it broadcast its entire evening schedule on Saturday 2nd December. First up that evening was Billy Smart’s Circus.
With several companies now in a race to provide tourist/passenger space travel, our thoughts have maybe moved beyond supersonic travel, which is strange given that we only really mastered it once for commercial use in Concorde. And it was December 1967 that the world enjoyed its first glimpse of the British and French financed passenger jet. But despite looking good outside its hangar in Toulouse, it would be another 14 months until it made its maiden flight.
Yet the best piece of news from 1967 must have been the incorporation of Evans Weir, a local firm of accountants that would go on to support hundreds of businesses and individuals with their tax and accounting needs.