Surviving Hiroshima : Keiko Ogura

Keiko Ogura

 Keiko Ogura was eight years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. She still lives in the city.
I wanted to go to school, but my father said 'I have a very strange feeling today - you shouldn't go to school, stay with us'.
That morning I was on the road near the house and all of a sudden I saw a flash of blueish white light - a magnesium-like flash and soon after a big sound with dust, and I was blown away and fell on the ground.
I found myself lying on the ground near the house. I thought the house was just in front of me but I couldn't see it because everything had become so dark and many pieces of wood and roof tiles and rubbish were falling on my head.

There was black rain falling... It smelled bad and there were many spots on my white blouse

And in the darkness there was a strong, strong wind like a typhoon. I couldn't open my eyes but tried to get back to my house and in the darkness I heard somebody was crying - my brother and sister.
I was 2.4km from the hypocentre but houses nearer the hypocentre had caught fire and were burning.
I saw long lines of refugees, just quiet, I don't know why they were so quiet. There were long lines, like ghosts.
Most of them were stretching out their arms because the skin was peeling off from the tips of their fingers. I could clearly see the hanging skin, peeling skin, and the wet red flesh and their hair was burned and smelled, the burnt hair smelled a lot.
And many people, just slowly passed by the front of my house.

Parched
All of a sudden a hand squeezed my ankle. I was so scared but they said 'get me water'. Almost all the people were just asking 'water', and 'help me'.

Celebrates the first man on outer space

Yuri Gagarin: The journey that shook the world

By Paul RinconScience reporter, BBC News

Gagarin was just 27 when he made his epochal 108-minute orbital flight

Continue reading the main story

Yuri Gagarin's single orbit of Earth 50 years ago this month ushered in the era of human spaceflight.

Gagarin's 108-minute flight was another major propaganda coup for the Soviet Union, which had successfully launched the first satellite - Sputnik - in 1957.

"I was a young fighter pilot in Germany I was flying F-102s in Rammstein Germany. We were more focused on the building of the Berlin Wall that year, rather than the space race," says Nasa astronaut Charles Duke, who walked on the Moon during the Apollo 16 mission in 1972.

"When he flew, my first impression was - well, they beat us again."

Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev, who was the Soviet premier at the time of Gagarin's flight, told BBC News: "We were very proud but we did not really understand how important it was. It was one more flight, one more achievement."

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But he says his father was acutely aware of the significance, and orchestrated a celebration in Red Square upon Gagarin's return to Moscow.

"When we look at the response of the Muscovites, where everyone was in the streets, on the roofs of buildings and in the windows, I would compare this celebration with the May 9 victory day (the end of World War II for the Soviet Union)," says Sergei.

During the Cold War, such "firsts" were used by the USSR to claim technological might and ideological superiority.

But the architects of both the US and Soviet space programmes had loftier ambitions of sending humans on voyages around the Solar System.

The Americans and the Soviets experimented by sending animals into space prior to launching people.

Titanic hero

12 April 2012 Last updated at 03:48 GMT

Jack Phillips: Boy from Godalming became Titanic hero

By Sally Nancarrow

BBC News, Surrey

For a young man from a Surrey village, being promoted to chief wireless telegraphist on the new luxury liner Titanic was a source of great pride.Continue reading the main story

The son of a draper, Jack Phillips operated the most modern and powerful wireless equipment of any merchant ship of the time.

Jack Phillips by Martin Ellis. Picture: Godalming Town Council

But before the doomed vessel sailed, he told a friend he would have preferred to be aboard a smaller ship - for Jack had a dread of icebergs.

Nonetheless his actions in the early hours of 15 April 1912, as Titanic sank in the Atlantic, ensured that he was remembered as a hero of the disaster.

He stayed at his post, sending out the distress calls and advising on the latest position of the ship until it foundered.

His last message was picked up by another ship, the Virginia, at 02:17, three minutes before the stern sank.

His body was never found and it is believed he went down with the liner.

"He was a tremendous hero at the time," said Alison Patterson, curator of an exhibition about Phillips at Godalming Museum.

"His messages brought the Carpathia to people in the lifeboats.

Tintin on film

Tintin 2: Horowitz says story 'still under discussion'

By Tim Masters Entertainment and arts correspondent, BBC News

The first Tintin movie was released in the UK last week

Writer Anthony Horowitz says there is still a question mark over which Tintin book will be adapted for the sequel to Steven Spielberg's chart-topping film.

Horowitz said earlier this year he had penned a script based partly on Herge's Tintin story Prisoners Of The Sun.
"That was true a few months ago," Horowitz told the BBC, "but I can tell you that I think the second film is not going to be Prisoners of the Sun".
"What it is going to be is still under discussion."
He added: "I've had meetings with the directors and producers and we've talked about ideas and action sequences.
"At the moment I'm trying to put together a story that will please everybody. It's a very difficult one to do."
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is currently top of the UK and Ireland box office.
The motion-capture 3D blockbuster stars Jamie Bell as Herge's young roving reporter, alongside a largely British cast that also includes Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis.
The screenplay for the first film was written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish.
Peter Jackson, who produced the first film, is set to direct the Tintin sequel once he has finished work on The Hobbit.
Earlier reports had suggested that the second film would be based on both Prisoners Of The Sun and its predecessor The Seven Crystal Balls.
Horowitz, whose Sherlock Holmes novel The House of Silk was published this week, confirmed that he would be writing the second film but was yet to begin work on the script.
He said: "I am a huge Tintin fan I grew up on him and I'm looking to getting stuck in on this, but we're a little distant yet from actually having a script...
"The good news is if [Prisoners Of The Sun] is not the second film it'll be the third film so actually I could end up with two Tintins under my belt."
Horowitz's TV writing credits include Midsomer Murders, Poirot, Robin of Sherwood and Foyles War.
He is also the writer of the Alex Rider series of spy novels, and adapted the first - Stormbreaker - for the big screen in 2006.

Source : BBC News on Internet.

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• Tintin tops UK box office (telegraph.co.uk)