That movie looks familiar
QUESTION
Was a Richard Burton film made from pieces of another movie? RAID On Rommel, starring Richard Burton, was released in 1971 and featured action and location footage from the 1967 film Tobruk, starring Rock Hudson and George Peppard.
Tobruk was loosely based on the British attacks on German and Italian forces in Libya in September 1942, codenamed Operation Agreement.
To enable as much footage as possible from the earlier film to be re-used, Raid On Rommel had a similar plot, with the destruction of huge guns and a gasoline depot as the climax.
Hollywood director Henry Hathaway, famous for westerns such as True Grit, somehow found himself at the helm of Raid On Rommel. Burton’s career was undented by this B-feature.
While stock footage was re-used many times over in the early days of Hollywood, it became less prevalent in later decades.
However, TV shows such as The A-Team and Knight Rider would borrow the odd explosion or action scene from their studio’s feature films.
Rather like Raid On Rommel, Oakmont Films’ low-budget Mosquito Squadron in 1969, often erroneously cited as a sequel to 1964’s 633 Squadron – which depicts the exploits of a fictional World War II British fighterbomber squadron – borrows most of the earlier film’s airborne scenes. It also uses footage and soundtrack from 1965’s Operation Crossbow for its pre-credits sequence.
In fact, the climactic explosions from Operation Crossbow can be seen in at least four other feature films. John Hunter, Grinton, North Yorkshire.
QUESTION
Why does the sequence of traffic lights here (red to green), differ to that in the North (red, red and amber, then green)? THE sequence of traffic lights in both parts of Ireland was once the same following the sequence in the UK.
But in the early 1960s, the sequence in the Republic was changed to differentiate traffic lights here from those in Britain and the North.
The history of traffic lights goes back a long way, to December, 1868, when a set of gas- powered traffic lights was erected close to the Houses of Parliament in London to control horse-drawn traffic and pedestrians.
Those traffic lights didn’t last long. On January 2, 1868, less than a month later, they blew up, killing a policeman.
Following on from that, nearly 50 years later, as motor traffic became more commonplace, the world’s first set of electrically operated traffic lights began operating in Cleveland, Ohio, US.
It just had two lights: red and green. Three colour signals were first introduced in 1918, in New York, and it was this type of traffic light that was used when the first set of electric traffic lights in Britain started working at Piccadilly Circus, London, in 1925.
Two years later, Wolverhampton became the first city in Britain outside London to start using traffic lights. In the early 1930s, the first set of traffic lights began working in Belfast city centre, followed five years later by the first set in this part of Ireland, which were erected at the junction of Clare Street and Merrion Square in Dublin in 1937. That set of traffic lights was put up by a firm from London and used the same sequence as in the UK.
Soon, further sets of lights followed in Clanbrassil Street and at the junction of Haddington Road and Northumberland Road.
While traffic lights spread quickly in urban areas in this part of Ireland, as motor traffic increased, Co. Leitrim didn’t get its first set of traffic lights until as recently as 2003. These were in the county town, Carrick-on-Shannon.
For many years, the sequence of lights on traffic lights in both parts of Ireland was the same, red; red and amber, then green, following the example of Britain.
It wasn’t until the early 1960s, however, that the sequence of traffic lights in the Republic was changed, to make them distinctive from lights in the UK including the North of Ireland.
The sequence here was changed in time for the 1962 Road Traffic Regulations and they’ve been the same ever since. The sequence here became green, amber, red then green.
Traffic had to stop at the right light, while green was for go if the coast was clear. The green arrow meant that traffic could progress in that direction is the way was clear, even if a red light was also showing.
When the amber light was visible, it meant that drivers couldn’t go beyond the stop line, or if none was visible, beyond the actual set of lights.
A flashing amber light meant that drivers could proceed provided it was safe to do so.
After that change was made to the sequence of traffic lights in the south of Ireland nearly 60 years ago, the sequences have remained the same, different from those in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
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