Feature: The End of the World Was Nigh – But What About Our Bournemouth Holiday?

Published on: 3 Feb, 2026
Updated on: 3 Feb, 2026

The end of the world, as predicted in the summer of 1960.

Looking through some long-forgotten notebooks, Dragon reporter David Reading was reminded of a news report from 65 years ago that put him in a panic at the time. Here, he recounts the story…

David Reading

The date is July 11th 1960, a Monday. The end of the world is scheduled for three days’ time and I am seriously troubled. No chance of enjoying our family holiday in Bournemouth or seeing in my 13th birthday.

Everyone on the planet is going to drown. Everyone except for a few perceptive individuals who have clambered to the top of Mont Blanc to escape the deluge.

This could have been one of those scary dreams, but I was reading about the imminent end of the world in The Daily Sketch, the tabloid paper that came through our door every morning. The BBC confirmed it in their morning news bulletin on the radio. The cause of our destruction was going to be something called a mercury bomb.

The reports told a story about an Italian paediatrician named Dr Elio Bianco. He carried a warning for the world that he said had been passed to him two years earlier by his sister Wilma, a psychic. Bianco said that at exactly 1.45pm on Thursday July 14th a secret weapon called a mercury bomb would go off by accident, tilting the Earth 45 degrees off its axis, flooding the entire world except its highest peaks.

Most people on the planet would be drowned or maybe burned alive in the actual blast.

But Bianco and his followers had realised they could escape the cataclysm by climbing the slopes of Mont Blanc to the point where the waters couldn’t reach. He was a kind of Noah of his time. And realising that what was about to happen was of Biblical proportions, Bianco felt he should have a suitable title.

He wanted to be known as King of the Reign of God and Priest in Perpetuity according to the Order of Melchizedek. And because he had a title, his followers thought they should have one too. They wanted to be known as the Community of the White Mountain. They were the meek who would inherit the Earth.

It’s easy to look back and realise how absurd all this sounds, but as an insecure, naive 12 year old Guildford boy I wondered why a respected middle-aged doctor would say such a thing if he didn’t have credible inside knowledge.

As it turned out, I was the only member of our family who took this seriously. Quite possibly I was the only one in the entire country. At school the impending calamity was treated as a joke. Somehow I let it slip that I was bothered by the possibility that Bianco could be right. I tried to get a serious conversation going with the other boys in my class at Godalming Grammar, but to no avail.

I looked for reassurance at home but my mum and dad were more interested in the news that John F Kennedy was running for President. I sat in the kitchen and turned on the radio. I was dreading hearing the seven o’clock news but at the same time I couldn’t wait.

I wanted to hear the newsreader say there was no such thing as a mercury bomb and Bianco and his followers were all crazy. But the evening news was full of items about the coming American election and there was nothing about the biggest event since the world began. I didn’t know the phrase at the time, but I would have said people were in denial.

And so the day arrived and then the hour. Funnily enough I went to school that morning even though there seemed little point. I thought that if we somehow survived the holocaust, I could get into a lot of trouble if I’d skipped lessons.

So I went in, along with everyone else. I listened to what they were talking about. They were talking about the Everly Brothers and about a movie called Psycho that no one could see because we were all too young and they were talking about the holidays. They weren’t talking about the one thing that mattered.

I wasn’t wearing a watch but there was a clock in the corridor, which I could see through the glass pane in the classroom door. Miss McKenzie had just begun giving us a lesson about something or other and it was odd, but when the moment of doom arrived, I kind of felt at peace, like there was nothing I could do so it wasn’t worth worrying.

The seconds passed. Miss McKenzie was talking and I was looking around at the other kids’ faces. No one seemed worried and nothing was happening. There was no dull rumble in the distance, no flash on the horizon, no one screaming that something terrible was happening and there was no sign whatsoever that the Earth was shifting off its axis.

Later I watched it on TV: Dr Elio Bianco coming down from the mountain reading a statement – a prepared statement, so they said, as if he’d had it in his pocket all along. He admitted he’d made a mistake. The police said they were going to charge him with spreading false reports.

News footage showed the Community of the White Mountain looking dejected. The newsreader made some kind of joke at the end of the piece.

Next day I went to school feeling euphoric. We were all still alive.