NewsInHistory Blog

It’s nice to see that humor was alive and well in Clarksville, Texas, on March 4, 1848, when the townsfolk picked up their local paper the Northern Standard and read this interesting comment:

“Overcome evil with good,” as the preacher said when he knocked a rascal down with the Bible.

Jeannette Pickering Rankin, a suffragist and pacifist, earned the distinction of becoming the first female member of Congress when she was elected to represent Montana in the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 7, 1916. She had worked hard in the successful campaign that granted women the right to vote in Montana in 1914. However, throughout her first term as a U.S. representative most women in the country could not vote (the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote nationwide was not ratified until 1920). read more...

When South Carolina became the first Southern state to secede from the Union, on Dec. 20, 1860, an elderly American had a unique perspective on this harbinger of the Civil War. Ralph Farnham, at 104, was the last Revolutionary War veteran still alive; the last living witness of the heroism and sacrifice that created the Union in the first place. He died six days after South Carolina seceded. read more...

Maine became the nation’s 23rd state on March 15, 1820, but its entrance into the Union was sullied by an acrimonious debate in Congress over slavery, a fierce disagreement solved by a compromise that pleased few and left many dissatisfied: the Missouri Compromise. In the spring of 1820 the United States had a delicate and precarious balance of 11 free states and 11 slave states. Missouri had applied for statehood as a slave state in early 1819 but anti-slavery forces in the House of Representatives thwarted it. read more...

It is hard to imagine the horror of what those people went through. There were 116 of them, sleeping inside two trains snowbound at Wellington Depot high in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. The trains, one carrying passengers and the other mail, had been stuck at Wellington for six days. The passengers were no doubt irritated, as the storms of the past nine days had piled up so much snow that there was no going forward—and perhaps somewhat uneasy as well, looking up at the huge snowfields crouching on the steep slopes high above them. read more...

Although better known as the successful general-in-chief of the Union army during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant later achieved another notable success when, as president, he signed legislation creating Yellowstone National Park—the world’s first national park—on March 1, 1872. Although known to the Native Americans, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century only a handful of white people, mainly fur trappers, had ever seen the staggering array of plants, animals, geological features and geothermal activity that make up the wonderland of the Yellowstone region. read more...

NewsInHistory is continually adding more content to our historical newspapers archive—titles new to our collection as well as expanding the date ranges and number of issues for titles already in our archive. This current addition involves 8 newspapers from 4 states and the District of Columbia. A total of 7,502 issues have been added in this release! Here are the details:

California

Evening Tribune (San Diego). 7 issues: 1912 to 1914
San Diego Union (San Diego). 1 issue: 1881 read more...

What started out as a lark, a delightful romp down the Potomac River on board the Navy’s sparkling new warship, turned into a bloody tragedy on Feb. 28, 1844, when a huge gun exploded on the deck of the U.S.S. Princeton, killing eight people including two Secretaries from President Tyler’s Cabinet. The cannon Peacemaker had successfully been fired twice earlier on the cruise and was supposedly done for the day, but Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer—who became one of the fatalities—insisted the gun be fired a third time to impress the guests, and Captain Robert F. read more...