A recent email received by staff at the Lithgow Mercury offered a fascinating piece of the paper’s history.
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Gavin Walsh sent the email from Ireland after researching a tragic air crash from which occurred on January 10, 1952 in Wales.
As part of his research into this crash Mr Walsh consulted as many newspapers as possible – literally thousands.
The crash happened at 7.15pm on a Thursday evening and as would be expected lots of newspapers had it in their stories on the 11th. However given that Australia are nine hours ahead of GMT, none of the Australian newspaper had it till the 12th, that is with one sole exception of the Lithgow Mercury.
“Assuming that the time difference was the same (+9 hours) in 1952, the crash occurred at 4.15am on the 11th,” said Mr Walsh.
“However, and it's a major however, the crash was not acknowledged until 10pm (7am Australian time) and indeed was not officially announced until 1am (10am Australian time).
