The Sun even lies about its birthdays

As reported here (and repeated here), The Sun started life as the Daily Herald in January 1911, as "a strike sheet for the London printing unions, then involved in an industrial dispute, to support their pleas for improved pay and conditions" (see: irony) before formalising its activity as a regular, daily newspaper from April 15th 1912 (pdf/source). It then went on to relaunch as an independent broadsheet titled The Sun on 15 September 1964. It was then bought by Rupert Murdoch and relaunched (again) in 17 November 1969 (more).

If these birthday/anniversary celebrations are really about 40 years of Rupert Murdoch, then by all means, let's wheel the old bastard out so we can stick some candles in him.

A copy of the front page of The Sun from 14 November, 1969. Click to enlarge. (Note the Orwellian announcement in the sidebar, promising some impending doubleplusgood news of the uppermost importance.)

A remixed version of the '40 years' television commercial that's been running in recent days

UPDATE - Do check out this tasty bit of audio hosted over at Chicken Yoghurt.

Columnists.

Is it just me, or have the columnists pages mysteriously disappeared from the Sun's website? I've noted over the last couple of days that the links on the Sun's main news page have gone, but the link to them entirely now also seems to have gone. The page still exists, but the last update was Saturday's columns. Is this the first phase of Murdoch's supposed charging for content plan, or just that no one really gives a stuff what the Sun's monkeys with typewriters churn out?