Saturday, August 7, 2021

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Newspaper Headlines on Your Birthdate

For this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver has us doing an online scavenger hunt for newspaper front pages.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music):

(1)
What is your birthdate?

(2) Find a newspaper from your hometown, or a nearby larger town or city, that was published on that date.  What was the major headline on page 1 of that issue of the newspaper?

(3) Share your headline with us in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a Facebook post.

NOTE:  For those who don't have access to digital newspapers behind a subscription wall, find FREE digital newspapers using Kenneth Marks' The Ancestor Hunt site at
https://theancestorhunt.com/newspapers.html.

(4) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post.

1.  I was born April 9, 1962 in Los Angeles, California (East L.A., to be specific; I have my own theme song!).

2.  I started my newspaper search on Chronicling America, because it's a free site that everyone has access to (your U.S. tax dollars at work!).  I found two newspapers there published on April 9, 1962, but they were from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.  Not exactly my hometown; not even the right side of the country.

Next I tried Newspapers.com, because I have a subscription.  I found two different isssues of the Los Angeles Times, a morning edition and a midday edition!


The top headlines for the morning edition:
• Cuba Price for Invaders:  $62 Million or 30 Years
• French Voters OK Algera Cease-fire
• Blood Flows as Algeria Vote Wins
• Sino-Soviet Split Called 'Inevitable'
• Sailors Quit Ship, Taking Grain to Reds

The top headlines for the midday edition:
• Hounds Track Fleeing Convicts
• Border Gun Fight:  Tourists See Norwalk Man Die
• Gunpowder Blast Kills 20; 500 Flee
• 2 Yanks Die, 2 Held in S. Viet-Nam
• Caliente Race Fans Panicked
• And a photo of Richard Burton in Rome

I found it interesting how different the stories were from the morning to midday.

4 comments:

  1. Great idea picking two editions of the same paper!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was lucky enough to find that. I don't really remember the days when newspapers put out multiple editions. Maybe it was only in big cities?

      Delete
  2. Funny how news has changed. While it might make the online entertainment & gossip sites, we aren't likely to find a photo/article about an actor visiting a foreign city in a traditional hard copy newspaper.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Considering how print newspapers have reduced in size, I think you're right. Actors visiting foreign countries still show up in news, but online now.

      Delete

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