BREAKING 1776 NEWS: First British Report of America’s Declaration of Independence
After extensive archive and internet research, including a few email exchanges with the British Library, it is my conclusion that the first official British newspaper report of the actual July 4th Declaration was published in the August 10 to 13, 1776, London Chronicle. While the full printing of the Declaration appeared four days later in ...
President George Washington’s First Inaugural Speech
As a follow up to the previous post about the eyewitness account of George Washington’s 1789 inauguration, below are excerpts from the May 6, 1789 Massachusetts Centinel, which contains descriptions of the inauguration as well as the full text of Washington’s first inaugural speech, one of America’s 100 milestone documents.
The First National Report of Lincoln’s Assassination
President Abraham Lincoln was shot at 9:30 p.m. on Friday, April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theater. He was moved to a house across the street where he died at 7:22 a.m. on Saturday, April 15. The news bulletins through 2 a.m. reached the New York Herald by telegraph in time to make its first edition, ...
A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston
At a town meeting on March 12, 1770 — one week after the Boston Massacre — James Bowdoin, Joseph Warren and Samuel Pemberton were appointed to a committee to prepare the Patriot account of the massacre. According to John Doggett Jr.’s 1849 enhanced edition of the Patriot account, during that March 12 meeting a “report ...
B. Franklin’s Confession to Leaking Hutchinson’s Letters
If a finger had to be pointed at one person for causing the American Revolutionary War, a strong case can be made for pointing it at Thomas Hutchinson. According to the Origins of the American Revolution by Andrew Stephen Walmsley (1999): Rarely in American history has a political figure been so pilloried and despised by ...
Paul Revere’s “View of the Year 1765″
Paul Revere’s engraving of Boston’s “Bloody Massacre” is one of his most well known works. As of this posting, more than 60 percent of the Google image results for “Paul Revere engraving” return his engraved depiction of the Boston Massacre. A lesser known engraving by Revere is his patriotic response to the Stamp Act, titled ...
The First General Interest Magazine in History
Edward Cave’s famous Gentleman’s Magazine, which he edited under the pen name “Sylvanus Urban,” is considered the first general interest magazine ever published and was the first use of the term “magazine”. Here is the fifth edition of the January 1731 issue that got it all started.
The Charters of Freedom: No Photos Allowed
Thanks to the tip from @bostonhistory, we learned today that photographs and video will be banned in the Rotunda of the National Archives, home to the original Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The ban goes into effect February 24, 2010. For an excellent history on the conservation and preservation of the ...
Milestone Document: Washington’s Farewell Address
The Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Constitution of the United States (1787), the Bill of Rights (1791) — all of these are widely recognized for being among the most important documents in American history. Another milestone document was President George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796), in which Washington declared he would ...
