Ye Olde News

• 2012-05-08

  

  Is it just me or does the babushkaed lady in the background bear a striking resemblance to a certain former president?

  (source: Pictorial Encyclopedia of American History, Volume 11, 1962.)

• 2012-04-23

  

  As much as I don’t support big game hunting, and despite my literary-fueled desire to see this white rhino turn in to a Moby Dick-type situation, you’ve gotta admit it.

  Teddy Roosevelt was a badass.

  (source: The Daytona Daily News, January 8, 1910.)

• 2012-04-15

  

  100 years ago today people woke up to the news that the RMS Titanic had hit an iceberg during the night.

  Their morning newspapers also, almost unanimously, stated that not a single passenger had been lost in the incident.

  A combination of miscommunication, speculation, downright lies and lack of comment from the Titanic’s owners at the White Star Line led newspapers to universally misreport the Titanic’s fate on the morning of April 15, 1912.

  The famous New York Times headline most people are familiar with, is actually from the morning of April 16th, when the facts of the tragedy had finally become clear.

  (source: The Oakland Tribune, April 15, 1912.)

• 2012-04-14

  

  One of the many eerily inaccurate headlines printed on the morning of April 15, 1912.

  (source: The Portsmouth (OH) Daily Times, April 15, 1912.)

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  Many of false reports that the Titanic had been saved specifically credit the use of the ship’s wireless system. A system which would later come under considerable criticism for the many complications it led to during the sinking.

  (source: The Olean Evening Times, April 15, 1912.)

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  By the morning of April 15, 1912 (100 years ago tomorrow) it was pretty much universally known that the RMS Titanic had hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic during the night. What was not yet known was the fate of the ship and its passengers.

  In an age long before 24 hour news channels, newspapers cobbled together breaking news from scant and often contradictory wireless reports.

  As a result, on the morning of April 15, 1912 newspapers across the country almost unanimously reported that the Titanic had struck an iceberg, but that no lives had been lost.

  “Dewey Defeats Truman” may be the most famous inaccurate headline in history, but with 20/20 hindsight the headlines of April 15 have to be among the eeriest ever to appear in newsprint.

  (source: The Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, April 15, 1912.)

• 2012-04-13

  This really shouldn’t make me laugh.

  (source: The Daily Review (Decatur, IL), April 2 (top) and April 16 (bottom), 1912.)

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  An advertisement for passage on the Titanic listed just below one for the Carpathia, the ship which would rescue the Titanic’s surviving passengers just four days after this ad was published.

  (source: The Washington Post, April 12, 1912.)

• 2012-04-12

  

  This week marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

  The Titanic was the first thing that really got me interested in history, so much so that I often refer to it as my ‘gateway drug’.

  Because of its very special place in my heart I therefore officially declare this Titanic Spam Week on Ye Olde News.

  You have been warned. :)

  (source: The Daytona Daily News, January 8, 1910.)

• 2012-04-09

  

  What I wouldn’t give to witness the conversation that resulted in this coat of arms.

  (source: Siebmachers Wappenbuch, 1882.)