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Christmas through the eyes of a newspaper from 1794…
December 25, 2025 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
As I was searching through our newspapers published on Christmas from the past in the hopes of finding one which would be potentially meaningful to our collecting friends, I came across a December 25, 1794 London Gazette which seemed to hit the mark. I’d love to know if you agree.
Under the heading “AMERICA” on page three I found the entire text of President George Washington’s State of the Union address. It is quite lengthy, and the entire text can be found online, but I was struck by the first and last paragraph – both of which are shown below. Is it me, or could these words have been penned today? Merry Christmas!
I’m New Here: January 23, 2020
January 24, 2020 by Stephanie Williams · Leave a Comment
History’s Newsstand/ Rare & Early Newspapers has a well-deserved reputation for excellence and integrity; and procedures and processes are regularly evaluated to incorporate the highest quality systems available. Our website is undergoing some upgrades, most of which will be indiscernible to the average collector/follower. But in order to be certain things will indeed remain in order, I have been given the assignment to spend some time logging in and out and creating orders from an objective perspective.
As such, I have perused our web inventory – reading through descriptions and looking at photographs. I have completed numerous purchases the budget of my reality would never allow. And it has been great fun.
I learned two notable things. The first is that our website is an amazing tool to navigate the extraordinary inventory here. I searched date, title, topic, item number with successful outcomes. But most interesting to me was the list available by clicking the orange oval button “View All Categories”. This index of more than sixty topics, while not exhaustive, is a fabulous research resource. For those who regularly meander through online topics and items of interest, I encourage the home page of Rare Newspapers as a springboard for many happy hours of informative browsing.
As a second point of interest, I tagged the strangest report I encountered in my wanderings. It seems some of the earliest plastic surgery occurred in India and included rhinoplasty (although not identified as such). Through three separate avenues I arrived at the same description from The Gentleman’s Magazine, published in London, October of 1794.
Included is a fascinating–and extremely early–account of what we would call plastic surgery, being a letter from the East Indies which notes in part: “…the following very curious, and, in Europe, I believe, unknown chirugical [archaic spelling of ‘surgery’] operation which has long been practiced in India with success; namely affixing a new nose on a man’s face…” followed by the various details. Accompanying this is a full page plate of it, with 5 images (see).
Ironically, all these features and items are available on our website in its current state. I just hadn’t taken the time to look.
Have you?