Clip of the Week: November 1, 2023

It never hurts to ask: William Walsh, a pensioner, and the oldest living veteran of the [American] Civil War, wrote to Congress saying that his consumption of tobacco was increasing with his years. He said that he was utterly unable to gratify his desire for smoking unless he received an additional twelve dollars monthly. The Read More

Mind Your Manners

“Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals,” the politician Horace Mann is said to have declared. While the stories below suggest otherwise, there’s no denying that good manners can make all the difference in just about any situation. If you follow the etiquette you (hopefully) learned in preschool, you’ll go far—into the judicial system, that Read More

The Un-Odyssey

What would’ve happened if, after the Trojan War, Odysseus had simply given up and not made the long, perilous journey home? The answer might lie in an anecdote from Scotland. . . Some short time ago, in one of the villages on the Firth of Forth, lived a lady whose husband had long before gone Read More

Clip of the Week: August 23, 2023

Talk about a claim to flame. Folks, we have another world record: The other day, for the tenth time in his life, Joseph Maski, 103 years old, believed to be the oldest person in Chicago, was rescued from a fire which threatened to destroy the building in which he lived, at No. 8961, Superior Avenue, Read More

Clip of the Week: July 12, 2023

Forget hats, sunglasses and knee watches—the summer accessory you didn’t know you need is a poison-detecting guinea pig carrying case: Travellers through America are advised to carry guinea pigs with them to test the quality of any liquor offered them. The animal should be allowed to lap up a few drops of the fluid and Read More

Crêpe and Punishcake

What’s better for defending your home than an assault rifle? Why, a-syrup rifle, of course! A Paris message says: An elderly lady, Mme. Mouillebois, was engaged in frying pancakes in her rooms in the Rue de la Maison Blance on Saturday, when she was alarmed by hearing the door of her flat open. A man Read More

Clip of the Week: May 31, 2023

We know what happens to a marriage when a wife has 35 cats, but what about when she has 27 dogs? Answer: the unauthorized sequel to “One Hundred and One Dalmatians.” Dogs to sing a chorus and harmonize domestic infelicity, was an arrangement advised by Magistrate Breen in West Chester police court yesterday. The idea Read More

Clip of the Week: May 17, 2023

This guy puts the “petty” in Pettibone: Some New York man has been having fun at the expense of the editors of that city. Knowing the eagerness with which republican editors publish letters from democrats who have turned republican, “A. C. Pettibone” wrote a letter to a republican paper in which he said he had Read More

The Danish Deadhead

On a recent visit to Copenhagen, I fell in love with the scenic waterfront, the pastries, the castles and gardens, the pastries, the attractive men, and did I mention the pastries? While none of these are fodder for a history blog, they did send me scurrying to the historical newspapers. There, I stumbled across a Read More

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