• The “experts” don’t always get it right…

    Updated: 2011-03-31 22:06:29
    We recently unearthed two different newspapers which scream the reality “the experts are often wrong”.  The first report was an early review of “Gone With The Wind” which was not favorable (issue #580564).  The 2nd was a statement concerning Babe Ruth which occurred soon after he was traded to The New York Yankees which questioned [...]

  • A proportionate reward…

    Updated: 2011-03-31 22:06:29
    Sometimes we read things which drive home the futility of human wisdom.  Solomon would certainly have cringed at the following verdict which appeared in the “Democratic Watchman” newspaper from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, dated February 23, 1877:

  • The Traveler… Maine becoming a state?… the horses know the way!…

    Updated: 2011-03-31 22:06:29
    This week’s journey found me with the Middlesex Gazette issue dated March 7, 1811. This contained a headline “Another New State” in which the District of Maine (a part of the state of Massachusetts) had held a Convention in Boston and voted 56 to 18, that “it is expedient to take the sense of the [...]

  • First newspapers in North Dakota…

    Updated: 2011-03-31 22:06:29
    The Dakota Territory organized in 1861 encompassed both present-day North & South Dakota. It was in 1889 when statehood was gained that the Territory was split into North & South. But it was during the Civil War, in 1864 when two solders issued at Fort Union (present-day North Dakota) a newspaper called the “Frontier Scout” [...]

  • Galt, California, among our Old West titles…

    Updated: 2011-03-31 22:06:29
    We have many issues of the “Weekly Galt Gazette“, California, in our Old West inventory, but perhaps few of our collectors know this city–current population of some 23,000, in Sacramento County–had its start in the California Gold Rush. In 1850, a group of farmers settled around the banks of a small stream, Dry Creek, close [...]

  • First newspapers in Ohio…

    Updated: 2011-03-31 22:06:29
    Ohio was still part of the vast Northwest Territory when the first newspaper in present-day Ohio was published in 1793.  The date was November 9 and William Maxwell’s newspaper the “Centinel of the North-Western Territory” was the first product of the printing press anywhere north of the Ohio River & west of the Allegheny & [...]

  • It never caught on…

    Updated: 2011-03-31 22:06:29
    This “Novel Hydraulic Railway Locomotive” made the front page of “Scientific American” on Feb. 10, 1877, with a descriptive article which begins: “A new mode of traveling has lately been invented…”.  Apparently it never caught on:

  • It’s all relative…

    Updated: 2011-03-31 22:06:29
    The following item reflects court costs from 1877, fees which are very much in the distant past.  But it’s all relative. While the cost may have outweighed the benefit, sometimes things are still worth fighting for – on matters of principle. This appeared in the “Democratic Watchman” newspaper from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, dated February 16, 1877:

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