The Comet is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month
- Credit: Archant
It s May 1971. Currency has just been decimalised, The Two Ronnies have made their BBC debut, and the first edition of this newspaper is soon to hit the printing press and land on doormats across Stevenage and North Herts - but not as you know it.
Five decades ago today, the first Stevenage Sun was published - along with Hitchin and Letchworth editions.
The paper was published by Home Counties Ltd as the successor to the long-established Hertfordshire Pictorial, a paid-for weekly dating back to the 1920s.
The Sun was free, and householders got to flick through the pages for the first time on May 13, 1971. Of course, the name wasn t to last, but here s how the title was introduced: