A couple of months ago I was reading the final chapter of Earl Redman’s “Shoghi Effendi: Through the Pilgrim’s Eye“, which focusses on the Bahá’í World Congress in London in 1963. This congress celebrated 100 years from Bahá’u’lláh declaring Himself a Manifestation of God.

Reference is made a couple of times, in that last chapter, to a special souvenir edition of the London Evening News and I was wondering whether I would be able to Google a copy of it somewhere. I couldn’t, but – as luck should have it – that same afternoon I was clearing out a Bahá’í property and found a pile of Newspaper clippings from the time of the Congress, including the front and back pages of that special edition.

 

One story from the Congress was that the police were struggling to prevent the Bahá’ís from holding up the traffic, partly because many of the Bahá’ís came from places where they were not familiar with traffic and partly because – while they were making their way over the crossings – they would meet each other and stop to hug, kiss, greet and catch up. One officer had heard the Bahá’ís using the term “Alláh-u-Abhá” a lot, so he thought he would try using it to hurry Bahá’ís out of the middle of the road, the result however, when he went into the middle of the road and said it, was that the nearby Bahá’ís came over and enthusiastically embraced him as well.

Some more clippings…