Marissa Mayer's blog post about Yahoo! having acquired Tumblr leads with the "Keep Calm and Carry On" propaganda image that the British government generated during the war but never used because it was only meant to be rolled out as a very last resort in the emergency situation that Nazis had occupied England.
I'm assuming you don't live or visit the UK often, as that poster is everywhere and is used in various forms by huge numbers of companies. There is absolutely no political subtext to its use anymore.
I think it's funny to see people use things in apparent ignorance of their historical context; for example I was totally bummed that http://www.gophercon.com/ wasn't about the protocol.
>only meant to be rolled out as a very last resort in the emergency situation that Nazis had occupied England.
Source? I'm reading that it was to be used if they experienced a "national catastrophe" or bombings with poison gas. I don't even know if it makes sense to print a propaganda poster for use after occupation.
This claim is not well-sourced (i.e. I exaggerated way beyond what we can prove is true.). Michael Balfour's 1979 book "Propaganda in War 1939–1945: Organizations, Policies and Public in Britain and Germany" discusses the slogan briefly in a footnote saying that it was considered too extreme vs. other possible slogans:
""By 3 August they had drawn up a shortlist of five slogans which was shown on that day to Hoare, who chose the three actually put into production (INF 720). The third poster 'Keep Calm and Carry on' [sic] was never displayed, as too obviously inappropriate to the actual conditions.""
