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By Root 985 0

ordered to prevent the silhouetting of vessels in the docks and shipping lanes, which would have made them easier targets for German U-boats. Still, New York was the premier electric city, and though officials had the example of London to emulate in its methods for blacking out, it took more than a year, and numerous district drills, to prepare the borough of Manhattan—with its hundreds of miles of streets, its fourteen thousand acres—for its first complete drill. The day and time of the beginning of the drill—9:30 P.M. on May 22, 1942—and its duration—twenty minutes—were widely advertised beforehand and entirely expected. It turned out to be a foggy night with a cool wind. In Times Square, immediately before the air raid drill, wardens and policemen began to call, "Get off the streets.... Everybody off the street." Pedestrians crowded into doorways and under marquees. They piled into the subway entrances. According to the New York Times:

The crowds melted into the darkness, taking refuge wherever possible. You could stand in the center of Broadway or Seventh Avenue and barely discern a moving form. Several rooms in the Claridge Hotel still showed pale light. The wardens and policemen shrilled their whistles or called hoarsely to these places. "Lights out, Claridge! Put out those lights!" The cry went up from male and female voices, and one by one the Claridge lights died.... Now and then a man or woman, or a couple, broke for cover and the patter of their feet was clear and distinct above the whispers of those already under shelter.... Kiosk lights at Forty-first Street and Seventh Avenue were blurry globes in the rain. A zealous warden, unable to find some one to put it out, dumped a basket of rubbish over one of these lamps but the beams lanced out from under the blanket and threw shafts into the shining gutter.

There were no lights all the way up Fifth Avenue, throughout Greenwich Village, in the fog and rain of Harlem, or along the crooked, narrow streets of Chinatown. On the East Side, shades were drawn over the Sabbath candles in the windows. Millions breathed in the dark, sitting in living rooms or standing at the sink or in entry halls, on the dance floor, or by their work stations. Although there was no order for quiet, few spoke above a whisper.

When the all clear was sounded at 9:50 P.M. and the lights came on, they hadn't been doused long enough to give people's eyes time to adjust to the dark. Chemical changes in the retina had not yet occurred. In Times Square, almost immediately after the drill, voices rose above the noise of traffic starting up, and dance music leaked out of nightclubs. Crowds poured out of the entryways and up the subway stairs and moved steadily along the streets once more. "As the lights came on again in hotels and shop windows and traffic lamps winked red and green through rain, the crowd cheered."

In London, when after nearly six years of nighttime restrictions the blackout order was lifted, the exhausted populace didn't seem to have the heart to light up the city again. The New York Times reported, "For every undraped window there were twenty in darkness. Some of the black-out windows showed chinks of light, which hitherto would have brought the air raid warden to the door.... Department stores stayed dark, as did the electric signs on Piccadilly. It will be some time before wiring can be refurbished." The streetlamps also remained dark, because their wires needed to be refurbished as well. "The few householders who left their windows bare had to remember that a front room from the street looked like a well-lighted stage set and act accordingly. Mostly they blacked out, as before."

16. Lascaux Discovered

DURING THE LONG MONTHS in which the lights were out all over Europe, the Paleolithic drawings in the Lascaux Cave were discovered. On September 8, 1940, in the Vézère Valley in the Black Périgord of France—then known as Vichy France—seventeen-year-old Marcel Ravidat, along with several friends and Ravidat's dog, were roaming the hills above their town. In the nineteenth