Flipping heck it's US dolphins in Bilston
It was the day that a school of dolphins from Florida USA swapped the deep blue surf of the Atlantic Ocean for the chlorinated water of a Black Country swimming pool.
And the people of the region were so enchanted by their antics that the popular performers stayed for a few weeks – putting on nightly shows at Wolverhampton's Bilston Baths.
It may have been 36 years ago but it is something that Irene Hale, then a young mother-of-three, has never forgotten.
She sat in the front seat of the balcony for the first show and was eye-level with the dolphins when they leapt majestically out of the water to perform flips and tricks.
But when she regaled her grandchildren with the memory, they thought she was telling fairytales and refused to believe her.
So the former residential social worker appealed to the Express & Star to help prove her right, and today we reproduce the photographs that were published at the time.
More than 3,000 advance bookings were taken for the Florida Dolphin Show's five-week run at Bilston, which staged three performances a day, in the run-up to Christmas 1973. It followed shows the previous year at Heath Town Baths. Bilston-born Irene, who now lives in Wales, said: "It does sound hard to believe – dolphins in Bilston –but I remember it very clearly."
The 58-year-old took all three of her children to the Prouds Lane pool for swimming instruction from the age of two weeks, and spent a lot of time there.
She said: "We heard there were dolphins coming and then one day these big tanks arrived and we were told it was them. We came to two shows they were that good. The dolphins jumped through hoops and performed all kind of tricks, it was absolutely brilliant.
"Then Val, the children's swimming instructor, took us down into the basement to see the dolphins under the water through portholes.
"If the manager had caught us, we would probably have got into trouble but luckily he didn't," she added.
Originally from the Villiers estate, Irene says she occasionally sees dolphins swim up the Cambrian coast by her home in Towyn.
"It's a beautiful sight, and it always reminds me of home and the day the dolphins came to Bilston," she added.
