Category: 50s to 90s

A first person account of the 1990 Iraqi invasion. Now with English subtitles. [YouTube]

BuzFairy posted a snippet from a newspaper in which they talk about a 7-star hotel being built in place of Al-Salam Palace. I think that sucks, I was actually expecting them to renovate the palace one day… not demolish it! [Link]

Sorry I don’t have any idea how old this shot is or where in Kuwait it is exactly. I just found a link to it on Flickr and a link to the image not even the uploader of the shot. [Link]

Update: I’ve updated the link above. Photo was uploaded by Brett whom I’ve posted about before [Here]

Here are some links related to the 1990 Iraqi invasion:

Kuwait Invasion – The Evidence
A website containing over 1,200 pictures taken right after the 1990 invasion as photographic evidence to all the destruction caused.

Short movie: Hearts of Palm
Hearts of Palm is a short movie set in August 2nd 1990 and deals with Kuwaiti students living in Miami Florida during the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait.

The Class of 1990
A short documentary about reuniting class mates years after the 1990 Iraqi invasion.

Homemade video from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
Video clips taken by a Kuwaiti family during the Iraqi invasion

Desert Storm Photos
Photos taken by soldiers during Desert Storm.

I previously heard that there were two DeLoreans in Kuwait and yesterday I found one of them. I know it doesn’t look like much in the picture above but if cleaned up the car it would look like the one below.

And with a little bit more work it can look like the one from Back to the Future.

I’ve previously posted about old cinemas in Kuwait but I’ve got some more old photos to share, ones that aren’t on the Cinescape Facebook page. The picture above for example is of the Hawalli open air cinema. I can’t imagine sitting on this hard metal chairs for 2 hours and in this heat, not sure how they used to do it before. Below are all the pictures I got:

If you want to see some more old pictures you can check out the ones that are on the Cinescape website [Here]

Thanks Ali

I found out about the website “Kuwait Invasion – The Evidence” and I’m really surprised I didn’t come across it before. The website contains over 1,200 pictures taken right after the 1990 invasion as photographic evidence to all the destruction caused. The pictures are organized into galleries but each page has only 12 thumbnails at a time so you will need to do a lot of page flipping to see them all. In case you’re looking for something specific you could try the search feature on the website but I’m not sure if all the images are tagged properly.

I flipped through 80% of the photos and managed to find a picture of Safeway and Showbiz but I wasn’t able to find any pictures of Kids R Us for some reason. I also saw a lot of pictures, the kind I hadn’t seen before like the one above of a residential door barricaded to keep the Iraqi’s out. Most of the photos feel very eerie and I only wish there was an easier way to view them all. Here is the link to the website [Link]

Photos by Adel Al-Yousifi

The Kuwait Scorpions rugby football club is one of the oldest clubs in the Gulf. They were formed back in the 1940s when the Kuwait Oil Company and the British Army played the region’s first ever recorded rugby fixture and they’re still around today and still very active. The pictures below are of the Kuwait Scorpions dating back to the 1950’s.

Here is the link to the clubs website [Link]
Here is a link to the the pictures in high resolution [Link]

Thanks Tron

There is a pretty strange/interesting post on Gizmodo by one of their senior reporters about when he lived in Kuwait for a short period right after the 1990 invasion. It’s strange because it’s so random and interesting because it’s a story about his yellow Sony Walkman and his tapes. I always wanted a yellow Walkman but never got one and sadly it’s too late to get one now. I wonder why Sony hasn’t released a yellow waterproof mp3 player yet. Anyway check out his post [Here]

Just spotted a bunch of really old ads on Bloglaish which I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t even know Tikka had a logo before the “I Like it Spicy” guy. [Link]

Not to be confused with the Pandora music station, this Pandora is something completely different. I love old gaming systems and I still have a bunch hidden away in boxes but the thing is it’s a headache to take them out and get them working. This is why I ended up getting the Pandora. It’s basically a super tiny laptop with game pad controls built in. It runs the Linux operating system and it allows you to install whatever emulator you want onto it. Pandora was actually created by four guys who wanted something better than what was available in the market. With the help of a gaming community they went ahead and created Pandora with the primary function being to run video game emulators. It costs them $400 to build each Pandora and they sell it for $500. It’s kinda like selling cupcakes from your home except they’re selling this incredible portable gaming system.

Pandora can run a ton of emulators including N64, Neo Geo, SNES, Sega CD, MAME, Sakhr, PlayStation, Dreamcast, Dos games and even Quake 3. I’ve been playing a ton of old school games on it since I got the Pandora with my favorites currently being the Dos version of DopeWars, the best racing game ever which is Neo DriftOut and The Castle, an old Sakhr game that is still crazy hard over 20 years later. If you want more information on the Pandora click [Here]

Just found out about this by mistake and thought it was worth sharing. I’m kinda surprised I hadn’t heard of this before.

Pavilion of Kuwait
With its exhibition hall buried approximately 20 feet under a marble dome, the pavilion was designed as a sculpture with flexible wooden arms that open and close to resemble a palm leaf. Through this design, the people of Kuwait expressed their history and life as follows: When the arms are closed like a seashell, it represents the protection of the Kuwaiti people. When the arms are halfway open it resembles a tent, which is a house for the Bedouin people to protect them from the desert storms. When the arms are fully opened, as shown in the photograph, it acts as a ship’s sail which explains Kuwaiti’s lives as traders and explorers of the sea before their blessing with oil. The building is made of poured concrete steel reinforced wooden arms which also provided shade during Seville’s hot summer days.

Inside the pavilion you could see a six minute video of the Kuwaiti people before the Gulf War, art, scale models of ships used for fishing and trading before the discovery of oil, and scenes of their Bedouin life. [source]

This architecture structure was built as part of the 1992 Universal Exposition in Seville, Spain. You can check out some pictures of it [Here]

Corbis has some pictures as well which you can view [Here]

Ahmadi Town from Archofkuwait on Vimeo.

If you’re a long time reader you will know I have a soft spot for old pictures of Kuwait. Right now I’m extremely ecstatic because Architecture of Kuwait have just posted what has to be the best Ahmadi post ever. They’ve posted a ton of incredible pictures of Ahmadi, nearly all of which I had never seen before and all of them are very good quality shots. They even posted the 20 minute documentary above! Check out the picture of Ahmadi at the bottom of this post, it just looks beautiful.

Here is the link to the Ahmadi post on AOK [Link]

I passed by Family Bookshop today and took as many pictures as I could. I figured the place might shutdown any day now and so it might be a good idea to document the place. It was pretty depressing. They currently have a court case with the new owner of the building and they aren’t doing well at all. According to the guy I spoke to they get very few customers and those who do come are old customers who used to be young 20 or 30 years ago and now come back with their grand kids to show them the place they used to get their books from. I walked around looking for an old copy of Hardy Boys or Dungeons & Dragons but didn’t find any not even a Peter and Jane book. On the other hand I did find some left over Jughead and Veronica comics in their old comics section. Below are some pictures I took of the place.

This is a completely random post but does anyone remember the old Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) we had in Kuwait before the internet took off? I am talking about the mid 90’s. I remember there was one I was a member of where the owner had a computer shop in the the mezzanine floor of Behbehani Building in Kuwait CIty. I think I was part of 2 or 3 different BBS’s not really sure since my memory isn’t that great. I originally had a 2400 modem but used to get kicked out of BBS’s until I splurged on a 28.8k Modem. If anyone here knows someone who used to run a BBS or if you participated in one please leave a comment below.

For those of you who don’t know what a BBS is, basically that was our internet before the internet. You can read more on it [Here]