I don't think the mystery object is a Varieze - the wing angles seem very different. Without knowing something of the set-up of the camera, it's impossible to even guess at height, size or speed, but would a commercial aircraft be out at night at what would seem to be a low altitude with no running lights?

I suppose some of the X45 UAV variants have similar wing geometry. But it doesn't seem a good fit there either.

It might be a British thing - my mother had a set of three wedge-shaped aluminium containers with wire handles and perforated bases that fitted into her pressure cooker or over a saucepan of boiling water.

Used for any three-way combination of carrots, beans and sprouts - sprouts, carrots, beans; beans, sprouts, carrots; etc -- I seem to remember from the 70s. But they were all home-grown and tasty, and there's little evidence of malnutrition now!

Back then, of course, 'pasta' meant spaghetti bolognese.

It's all a lot older than that. The electrical effects of light hitting metals was spotted in the first half of the 19th century, and Einstein got his Nobel in 1921 for his work on photoelectrics - which kicked off quantum mechanics. Bell Labs created usably efficient solar cells (which I imagine are the ones in this radio) in 1954, and being low voltage devices they must have seemed ideal companions for them new-fangled transistors. I had a light meter from the early 1960s which used such a cell and one was also built into my Radio Shack 65-In-1 electronics kit in 1975.

They really kicked off in public awareness in the 1970s and 80s with the development of low-power logic like CMOS, which meant they could power consumer gizmos like LCD wristwatches and calculators.

As for crystal sets needing now power; yeah. For me, there's nothing more magical than hooking up four or five components (which, at a pinch, you can make yourself and contain nothing not known to the Romans) and a length of wire, and hearing voices from around the world. That'll go away when they switch off the last AM transmitters in favour of much more efficient digital modes.

Rupert