The Off Topic Topic

[Eddie Teach]

Innocent, yet deadly.

[Josephus]

I've decided I don't really want to know.

See, perfectly innocent.

Ewwww...grosss

I hate oatmeal.

[Eddie Teach]

Without the oatmeal, it just tastes like diabetes.

[fhdz]

I need to get my hands on a box

If I had a nickel...

[Ideologue]

I've decided I don't really want to know.

It's how people like you and I were born.

Raz came out of a swamp, like Solomon Grundy.

[Ed Anger]

MEANWHILE, AT THE LEGION OF DOOM.....

[Josquius]

Pretty cool model making:
http://themetapicture.com/photographing-a-town-that-never-was/

[The Brain]

Pretty cool model making:
http://themetapicture.com/photographing-a-town-that-never-was/

Neat.

But I have heard that in the 50s "America's love affair with racism was in full swing". I notice that there are no black people in the photos.

[Syt]

Not true, there were black people in Back to the Future.

[Ed Anger]

Pretty cool model making:
http://themetapicture.com/photographing-a-town-that-never-was/

Neat.

But I have heard that in the 50s "America's love affair with racism was in full swing". I notice that there are no black people in the photos.

My dream town. Plus the women were in the kitchen.

[Josquius]

I like how he includes the real full size stuff off in the background

[Sheilbh]

Just noticed this obituary:

Hugh Lunghi - obituary
Hugh Lunghi, was a wartime interpreter for Churchill who saw Stalin up close and was the first into Hitler's bunker


Hugh Lunghi at home in 2005 Photo: REX FEATURES

Hugh Lunghi, who has died aged 93, was one of the last surviving participants of the "Big Three" meetings at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, interpreting for Churchill and other British officials in talks with Josef Stalin; he was also thought to have been the first British soldier to have entered Hitler's bunker in Berlin.

Lunghi worked at the Tehran and Yalta conferences between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. In July 1945 he was in Berlin for the Potsdam conference between Harry Truman and Stalin, at which Churchill was replaced by Clement Attlee after losing the general election. Soviet troops guarding Hitler's bunker let Lunghi take a sneak visit.

"It was damp and nasty and there was a lot of dirty clothing," he said in an interview with The Observer in 2005. "It was a horrible, grim place which smelt terribly. I thought: 'My God, this is history.' Outside there was a heap of ashes and a pile of stuff and I said, what was that? One of the soldiers, a major, said: 'Oh, that's Hitler and his mistress.'"

Lunghi took a volume of Hitler's Brockhaus encyclopedia as a memento and then went into the Reich Chancellery building where he found the dead Führer's desk smashed to bits. "When I took the Chiefs of Staff two or three days later, they picked up bits of the desk and I did too. I've still got bits of red marble at home."

Yet it was Stalin he knew best, as, between 1943 and 1949, he interpreted for most of the Soviet dictator's meetings with British generals and diplomats, including Field-Marshal Montgomery and Lord Mountbatten. As such Lunghi probably knew more about Stalin than any other British official.

Hugh Albert Lunghi was born on August 3 1920, literally into diplomacy – at the British Legation in Tehran, Persia, where his father, Phillip, was economic adviser. When Hugh was 10 months old the family returned to Britain, where he learned Russian at home from his Anglo-Russian mother, Helena. He was educated at Abingdon School, where he was Head of School and captain of the rugby XV, and Pembroke College, Oxford, where he read Greats and played rugby for the University.

During the Second World War he saw active service as a captain in the Royal Artillery (later promoted to major) but in June 1943 his excellent Russian led to his appointment as ADC and interpreter to the Head of the Military Mission in Moscow, Lt-General Sir Gifford Martel. In this role Lunghi travelled throughout the wartime Soviet Union, from Murmansk to the Caucasus.


Hugh Lunghi (centre) photographed at the Moscow Military Academy in 1947 with Field Marshall Montgomery (second left) and Marshall Koniev (third from right). (REX FEATURES)

In 1943, aged just 23, Lunghi travelled back to Tehran as interpreter for the British Chiefs of Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke (later Field-Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke); Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham; and Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal. From that time he would also serve as one of the interpreters at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam for Churchill and foreign secretaries Anthony Eden and Ernest Bevin.

Churchill's chief interpreter was Arthur Birse, with whom Lunghi worked closely. He also worked in tandem over several years with Stalin's usual interpreter, Vladimir Pavlov, and interpreted when British officials met the most senior Soviet grandees – from Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, to Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet Foreign Minister, as well as Marshals Klim Voroshilov and Nicolai Bulganin, and the top commander, Marshal Ivan Konev.

Such extraordinary access allowed the young Lunghi to see the Soviet leadership at close and sometimes absurd quarters. At Tehran on November 29 1943, for example, Lunghi was present when Churchill gave Stalin a gift from King George VI: an engraved sword to celebrate the Russian victory at Stalingrad. The usually impassive dictator was deeply moved and kissed the sword. He then handed it to his often tipsy old crony, Marshal Voroshilov, who was so excited that he dropped the sword. Stalin, who had already removed Voroshilov from active command, was deeply irritated. He ordered the blushing Marshal to apologise to Churchill. Voroshilov did so through Lunghi before offering his birthday wishes to the British leader, hoping to garner an invitation to his birthday party."Isn't he being a bit premature," growled Churchill to Lunghi. "Ah! Must be angling for an invitation. And he couldn't even play a straight bat with the sword."

In 1945 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten asked to meet Stalin at Babelsberg, outside Berlin, during the Potsdam conference. Lunghi, interpreting, was much amused by Mountbatten, who was keen to be invited to Russia. Through Lunghi, Mountbatten explained several times that he was a cousin of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and that as a toddler he had visited the Tsar "for three or four weeks at a time". Stalin, wholly unmoved, inquired drily whether "it was some time since he was there" before adding: "You'll find things have changed considerably."

During the war Lunghi fell in love with a beautiful young Russian student at the Moscow Operatic Conservatoire. At the end of the war, he asked her to marry him and they became engaged. Lunghi continued at the British Embassy in Moscow as chief interpreter and third secretary. When it was time for him to leave the USSR in 1947, however, the Cold War had stranded many Russian wives and fiancées of Westerners. Some 18 "Russian brides" were allowed out, after which others were no longer permitted to leave. Frank Roberts, the charge d'affaires, agreed as a special favour to ask Stalin at their next meeting in the Kremlin to give Hugh's fiancée permission to leave, explaining to Stalin that Lunghi had often attended their meetings. "Yes we know each other," said Stalin, glancing at Lunghi, who was at the meeting and himself had interpreted his own personal request. Lunghi's fiancée did receive official permission to leave, but her tea was poisoned on the train out by the secret police and she was removed. Back in Moscow she was arrested, tried for treason, spent a year in the Lubianka then several years in camps in Siberia. She survived, but Lunghi was not able to make contact with her again until the 1960s, by which time both were happily married to other people.

After Stalin's death, Lunghi interpreted for, among others, the President of the Board of Trade, Reginald Maudling, and Khrushchev, his wife Nina and the veteran Soviet potentate, Anastas Mikoyan, at the British Trade Fair in Moscow. One of the exhibits was an industrial laundry. Khrushchev, who despite his own role in Stalin's killings liked to remind his comrades of their part in the purges, gestured towards Mikoyan and said: "We should buy one of these for Mikoyan – it might clean all that blood off his shirt and trousers too." Lunghi hesitated but the need for translation passed as Khrushchev guffawed.

Lunghi continued to serve in the Foreign Office in London then joined the BBC World Service in 1954 and was successively head of broadcasts to Czechoslovakia, deputy head of Current Affairs commentaries worldwide and then in charge of the Central European Service broadcasting to Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Finland. During the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia he was the BBC's leading commentator.

On leaving the BBC in 1980 he became director of the Writers and Scholars Educational Trust and editor of its magazine Index on Censorship. He was elected vice chairman of Common Cause UK and was editor of its publications for more than a decade. He wrote for newspapers and appeared in television documentaries, and during the 1990s lectured at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. His books included Dubcek's Blueprint for Freedom; A History of the Russian Revolution; and The Common Cause Story.

Hugh Lunghi was a charming and witty raconteur and enthusiast who, even in his eighties, lost none of his sense of fun.

He married, first, Helen Kaplan, with whom he had a daughter. The marriage was dissolved and he married, secondly, in April 1950, Renée Banks. She died in 1992 and he is survived by their three daughters.

Hugh Lunghi, born August 3 1920, died March 14 2014

[Sheilbh]

Was on the phone to my mum for an hour. She's just discovered doge speak

[The Brain]

They're going independent.

[Sheilbh]

I was really disappointed when I found out it was dogecoin not Dogecoin. I thought you'd call a tenner 'a Dandolo'.

Sadly it was actually based on a cute shina ibu