Bloody Sunday, Selma, Alabama… Great Headlines Speak For Themselves…

March 11, 2015 by · Leave a Comment 

The best headlines need no commentary. Such is the case with the FITCHBURG SENTINEL, Massachusetts, March 8, 1965Blog-3-11-2015-Selma-Alabama

The Traveler… marching in Birmingham… Hitler’s end… your next party…

May 6, 2013 by · Leave a Comment 

Today I traveled to Detroit, Michigan by the way of The Detroit News for May 6, 1963. There I found that for the past several days Birmingham, Alabama, has been witnessing the “Children’s Crusade”, in which several hundred students had skipped school to march for desegregation and civil rights. Today’s report states it was peaceful with singing, chanting and praying as it was Sunday. Oddly enough the only arrest made (as of this article) was of a white couple inside the church as they were not permitted inside the church.

Also in the paper was a headline “Found Hitler’s Body in ’45, Reds Say in War ‘Secrets'” which also included a large photo Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun. This was information being released about the disposition of Hitler’s body from the release of a book by Cornlius Ryan entitled “The Longest Day”.

Did you ever want to be the life of the party? There is a story of a 15-year-old boy that, with a novelty ring, “touted to possess ‘hypnotic’ powers”.  Well, within a few minutes, he truly ended up placing a young lady into a trance but was unable to get her totally out of it. A call to her parents, a trip to the hospital, and a psychiatrist later, the trance was broken. Just be careful at your next party with your jewelry and what you say!

~The Traveler

The first newspaper in Alabama…

October 19, 2009 by · 1 Comment 

Tim_2008Credit must be given to John Oswald’s “Printing In The Americas” for the following on first newspaper printed in Alabama:

“Samuel Miller and John B. Hood started the ‘Centinel” at Mobile, Alabama, on May 23, 1811, but there is some doubt as to whether it was actually printed there. It was a troublous time for the town. The district in which it was located was claimed by Spain as a part of Florida, which she owned, and it was not until 1812 that the Congress of the United States annexed the Mobile district to what was then called the Mississippi Territory. The following year Gen. James Wilkinson occupied it with a military force, which was not resisted by the Spaniards. It is probable that the printing of the “Centinel” was done at Fort Stoddert, further up the river in American territory. In 1817 the territory was divided, the eastern portion being named Alabama, after a tribe of Creek Indians which inhabited the district, with St. Stephens as its capital. The territory became a state in 1819.”