Today: Headlines from 23 May 1925

Looking Back 100 Years

Welcome to another edition of “Today 100 Years Ago,” where we crack open yesterday’s newspapers and telegrams to find out what had the world talking on 23 May 1925. Strap in—our time machine is making two stops, from the Arctic pack-ice to the flag-draped streets of London.

1. Marooned Near the North Pole — Amundsen’s Air Expedition in Peril

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On this very day in 1925, the front pages buzzed with anxious bulletins about Roald Amundsen—already the stuff of legend for beating everyone to the South Pole—and his daring attempt to conquer the top of the world by air. Two Dornier Wal flying-boats (christened N-24 and N-25) lifted off from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, on 21 May, aiming to skim across the Arctic Ocean, drop a Norwegian flag at 90° N, and continue on to Alaska.

Thick fog and treacherous ice floes forced both planes down roughly 150 miles short of the Pole (≈ 87° 44′ N). By 23 May, wireless contact had gone silent, and newspapers from Oslo to New York were printing anxious headlines: “AMUNDSEN UNREPORTED—FEARED LOST ON THE ICE.”

For the six men now huddled on drifting pack-ice, survival meant emptying the damaged N-24 of its heavy innards, carving a makeshift runway with nothing but hand-tools, and praying the single remaining aircraft could claw into the frigid air. (Spoiler: after nearly four harrowing weeks, they did.)

2025 Perspective:
• Today’s polar aviators rely on satellite beacons, heated composite airframes, and real-time weather data. Back then, it was canvas parkas, a hand-crank radio, and raw nerve.
• The forced landing also became an early master-class in team crisis management—a case study still quoted in business schools a century later.

2. “Empire Day” Pageantry Rolls Across Britain and Beyond

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If the Arctic saga sounded bleak, the streets of London offered pure pomp on 24 May 1925—Empire Day, Queen Victoria’s birthday, and a moment for the British Empire to pat itself loudly on the back. From schoolchildren in Perth, Western Australia, to civil servants in Nairobi, the Union Jack unfurled in choreographed unison.

The epicenter was The Mall: crimson-coated guardsmen, colonial troops in dress khaki, and lines of Boy Scouts marching beneath mile-long rivers of bunting. Loudspeakers (still a novelty) crackled with an address by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, extolling “unity under the Crown” while hinting at looming economic storms.

2025 Perspective:
• The sun set on the empire long ago; today’s Commonwealth Day is a sober, largely symbolic affair. Yet the 1925 spectacle reminds us how power once relied on ceremony as much as policy.
• In an age of livestreams and social media, it’s hard to imagine newsreel cameramen elbow-to-elbow, cranking hand-held Bell & Howells to capture the moment in flickering black and white.