26 August 1970: the Isle of Wight holds the UK's biggest-ever music festival

On this day in 1970, 600,000 people flocked to the Isle of Wight to witness the biggest music festival ever to be held in the UK.

Isle of Wight festival, 1970 © Henri Bureau/Sygma/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
(Image credit: © Henri Bureau/Sygma/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

These days (well, not these days, but most years' days), there's a music festival every summer weekend on pretty much every spare plot of land from Thurso to Truro. Fresh-faced youngsters or whole families, depending on the niche the festival is intended to fill turn up with a bootful of freshly-bought equipment and set up camp, or rent eco-friendly tipis with composting toilets and solar showers. They settle down for a sophisticated weekend of the latest tunes and, if they're lucky, get a bit of a tan before leaving all their stuff in a filthy mess and heading home.

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Ben Judge

Ben studied modern languages at London University's Queen Mary College. After dabbling unhappily in local government finance for a while, he went to work for The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh. The launch of the paper's website, scotsman.com, in the early years of the dotcom craze, saw Ben move online to manage the Business and Motors channels before becoming deputy editor with responsibility for all aspects of online production for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News websites, along with the papers' Edinburgh Festivals website.

Ben joined MoneyWeek as website editor in 2008, just as the Great Financial Crisis was brewing. He has written extensively for the website and magazine, with a particular emphasis on alternative finance and fintech, including blockchain and bitcoin. 

As an early adopter of bitcoin, Ben bought when the price was under $200, but went on to spend it all on foolish fripperies.