On this day in 1948, the first U.S. and British pilots fly to Berlin bearing food, medicine, water, clothing and fuel in response to the Soviet Union blockade of the western section of the city.
Known as the Berlin Airlift, the operation brought around 2500 tons of supplies daily and continued to do so for four months after the blockade was lifted in May 1949.
Find more on this event in history with a search on Newspapers.com.
Don’t have a library? Never fear—the library will come to you. Such was the thought in eastern Kentucky, 1935, when the Pack Horse Library initiative began.
The job was no walk in the park. The lack of library access was often due to how remote these places were, and access to them was found through stony creeks, mud-caked footpaths, and on the skirting edges of cliffs. The librarians often had to walk on foot, leading their horse behind them, for the safety of themselves and their mounts. Library headquarters would be set up in the various counties in whatever building would offer room, and from here the librarian would stock up, travel with a pocket-full of adventures or recipes or romances, and later return to get a fresh batch to circulate.
“She” in this instance is Grace Caudill Lucas, who worked as a pack horse librarian
The Pack Horse Libraries lost their funding in 1943 and were forced to close up shop. Fortunately, bookmobiles were not far behind and took the reins—so to speak—in 1946 as a modernized version of the “horsemobile” libraries of the Great Depression. But for a decade, thousands of Kentucky residents had these brave women to thank for caring enough about literacy, education, and imagination to traverse the craggy Kentucky countryside with their bags full o’ books.
Find more on this snippet of history with a search on Newspapers.com.
Do you have family from Minnesota, particularly the Minneapolis area? Or are you interested in Minnesota history? Come explore* three related Minneapolis papers on Newspapers.com: the Star Tribune, the Minneapolis Star, and the Minneapolis Journal. The pasts of these three papers are closely connected through a long history of buy-outs and consolidation, finally resulting in the Star Tribune that exists today as Minnesota’s biggest newspaper
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In 1939, the Cowles family also bought the Minneapolis Journal (a top Minneapolis paper that had begun publication in 1878) and combined it with the Star as the Star-Journal. Not long after, the family also bought the Tribune, and the Tribune then served as a morning paper, while the Star-Journal (renamed the Star in 1947) functioned as the evening paper. Due to low circulation, the Star was discontinued in 1982, and the Tribune was renamed the Minneapolis Star and Tribune; the title was simplified to the Star Tribune in 1987.
The Minneapolis papers on Newspapers.com contain a wealth of information for anyone looking for information on ancestors from the area or doing research into Minnesota’s history. The overlap of the dates coved by these papers means that you’re that much more likely to find mentions of the person or topic you’re looking for. The Star Tribune (which on Newspapers.com also includes issues of the Tribune) has issues from 1867 to 2017. Newspapers.com has issues of the Journal from 1901 to 1906. And the Star has issues from 1920 to 1982.
Get started searching or browsing the Star Tribune, the Minneapolis Star, and the Minneapolis Journal on Newspapers.com!
* With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can view issues up through 1922; or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access those early years as well as issues between 1923 and 2017.
On this day in 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to vote “yea” on the debate of ratifying the U.S. Constitution, officially making it law.
More states would follow suit later, but only nine of the thirteen existing states had to accept for the Constitution to become valid.
Fun fact: While the United States is a fairly young country compared to others worldwide, it has the oldest written constitution still in use today.
Find more about this defining moment in history with a search on Newspapers.com.
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Looking for an easy way to make a big difference? Newspapers.com invites you to participate in the History Unfolded project run by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum!
What is History Unfolded?
History Unfolded is a project that seeks to expand our knowledge of how American newspapers reported on Nazi persecution during the 1930s and ’40s so we can better understand what Americans knew about the Holocaust as it was happening.
To help achieve this, the History Unfolded project asks people like you to search local newspapers from the 1930s and ’40s for Holocaust-related news and opinions and then submit them online to the museum. The newspaper articles you submit will be used to help shape the museum’s 2018 exhibit on Americans and the Holocaust and related educational materials. The articles will also be made available to scholars, historians, and the public.
Who Can Contribute?
Everyone! History buffs, students, teachers . . . All you need is an interest in the Holocaust and access to a newspaper from the 1930s or ’40s, either online (using Newspapers.com, for example) or through a physical archive, such as a library. Simply create an account with History Unfolded, and away you go!
How Do I Contribute?
History Unfolded has created a list of more than 30 Holocaust-related events to focus on. Choose one of these events to research, then search for content related to that topic in an American newspaper of your choice from the 1930s or ’40s. After you find an article related to one of the events, submit it online to the museum through the project’s website.
Newspapers.com and History Unfolded
You can contribute to this important project whether or not you use Newspapers.com to do so. But using Newspapers.com makes it even easier to submit the articles you find. Simply use Newspapers.com to create a clipping of an article you’ve found, then submit that clipping through the submission form on the History Unfolded website. The submission form has a special tool created specifically for Newspapers.com users that makes submitting your clipping a snap.
Your help with this project will help shape our understanding of the Holocaust and the lessons it holds for us today. For more information on how to get involved, visit the History Unfolded website.
This interesting little article found in Washington D.C.’s The Evening Times in 1899 seems to have left out a good number of clarifying details.
One wonders where they get the poker?
Find more like this on Newspapers.com with a search or browse.
Today in 1967, the Beatles release their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, generally considered the first “concept album.” The album marked a shift in the group’s career as they moved from being crowd-pleasing stage performers to more studio-focused artists.
The album got a pretty decent reception, receiving mostly positive reviews to match its commercial success. It topped the US Billboard 200 charts for 15 weeks after release.
Find more on this event with a search on Newspapers.com, or browse or search for whatever strikes your fancy.
On June 6, 1939, the St. Louis, a German transatlantic liner, was forced to sail back to Europe after more than 900 of its passengers [https://newspapers.ushmm.org/article/4716] (primarily German-Jewish refugees) were refused entry by Cuba; over 200 of these refugees would later die in the Holocaust.
The St. Louis departed Germany for Cuba on May 13. The majority of the 937 passengers were German Jews fleeing the increasing discrimination and violence against Jews under Hitler, and many planned to stay in Cuba only until they received U.S. visas. However, unbeknownst to most of the passengers, a week before the ship sailed, the Cuban government invalidated one of the types of travel documents held by the refugees.
When the ship arrived in Cuba on May 27, fewer than 30 passengers—those who had the proper papers—were allowed to disembark. Despite days of negotiations, the Cuban government could not be persuaded to allow the refugees to enter. Leaving Cuban waters on June 2, the ship sailed near the Florida coast. Passengers petitioned President Roosevelt for refuge but received no answer. The St. Louis was finally forced to return to Europe on June 6.
Throughout May and June, newspapers across the United States covered the plight of the refugees on board the St. Louis. However, reactions and opinions varied on the question of the refugees and on the related topic of immigration from Europe. For example, one letter to the editor, featured in Iowa’s Des Moines Register on June 11, was passionate in its support of the refugees: “As a human being, as a Christian, and as an American, I object to the treatment of 900 Jews aboard the ship ‘St. Louis.’ Surely […] we could shelter these tortured people until some permanent settlement could be made.”
In sharp contrast, another letter to the editor, this time from the De Kalb, Illinois, Daily Chronicle on June 20, took an isolationist stance regarding people fleeing Europe: “Until we [the United States] prove that we can handle our own political affairs intelligently, the proper thing for us to do is stay in our own back yard, lock the gate, and take care of our own troubles, which are plenty. Let Europe take care of their own destitute.”
Upon returning to Europe, the St. Louis was allowed to dock in Antwerp, Belgium, on June 17. The United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands agreed to divide the passengers among them, but safety for many of the refugees was short lived. Except for the refugees accepted by the United Kingdom, many of the former passengers were subject to Germany’s destructive sweep across Europe during World War II; 254 of the St. Louis‘s refugees would die during the Holocaust.
Interested in the St. Louis or other subjects related to the Holocaust? Newspapers.com invites you to participate in the History Unfolded project run by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As part of an effort to learn more about what Americans knew about the Holocaust as it was happening, the History Unfolded project asks people like you to search newspapers (on Newspapers.com, for example) for Holocaust-related news and opinions and submit them online to the museum. Not only will your findings be made available to scholars, curators, and the public, but you’ll also be helping to shape our understanding of this important period of history. For more information on the project, visit the History Unfolded website.
On this day in 1897, Bram Stoker’s sensational novel Dracula is released upon the London public.
…and it was pretty well received! By most, anyway. Though some reviewers found the novel not to their taste, many remarked on Dracula‘s ability to capture your attention from beginning to end.
Dracula has since become one of the quintessential classical Gothic novels and has inspired countless other stories in the years since its release.
Have you read Bram Stoker’s Dracula? What’s your favorite vampire story?
Find more like this on Newspapers.com with a search, or try your luck with browsing.
Whoops! I think they must have counted themselves lucky that this mistake didn’t turn out much worse.
Find more like this on Newspapers.com, either with a specified search or through browsing the selection of papers.
The “Tribune” part of the Star Tribune’s title refers to the 