Articles from The Literary Digest
This 1922 news column reported that Benito Mussolini had been granted power by the Italian King:
King Victor Emanuel of Italy has invited the leader of Fascisti, Benito Mussolini, to form a cabinet to replace the Facta Ministry.
The King of Italy Smiles on the Fascists (The Literary Digest, 1922) Read More »
An end of the year round-up of the 1916 lynchings concentrating on the state of Georgia as the lynching champion for the second year in a row (Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri were all tied for the 1914 title).
The Lynchings of 1916 (Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »
This article was published during the opening days of 1933 and reported on the deep spirit of optimism that was enjoyed by the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, and their executive director, Mrs. Jessi Daniel Ames (1883 – 1972). This group of Southerners were hoping that, through their efforts and those of other like-minded Southern organizations, 1933 would be a year without a single lynching:
If Mississippi can have a lynchless year, a lynchless South is a possible and reasonable goal…
The reporter dryly noted that a few days after the above remark was recorded, a lynching was committed – one of the twenty-eight that took place throughout the course of 1933.
1933: A Lynchless Year? (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
Today, the name of O. Henry (1862 – 1910) has a far stronger association with New York City than with North Carolina, (his birth place) or Texas, where he spent much of his youth; however when you come to read the attached letters, and see his cartoons, you will hear a very distinct Western voice that is far removed from the New York that he wrote about.
The Letters and Cartoons of O. Henry (Literary Digest, 1922) Read More »
The three articles attached herein were printed five years apart and collectively recall three different events by three different arms of the American military, each claiming to have fired the opening salvo that served notice to Kaiser Bill and his boys that the U.S.A. meant business:
• The first article chuckles at the Army for insisting that the First Division fired the premiere shot on October 23, 1917 in the Luneville sector of the French front;
• The second article recalls the U.S. Merchant Marine freighter MONGOLIA that sank a German U-Boat on April 19, 1917 while cruising off the coast of England.
• following up with the absolute earliest date of American aggression being April 6, 1917 – the same day that Congress declared war – when Marine Corporal Michael Chockie fired his 1903 Springfield across the bow of the German merchant raider S.M.S COMORAN on the island of Guam.
America’s First Shot (Various Sources, 1917 – 1937) Read More »
A foremost scholar in the field of Native American Music insisted that the American Indian had a guiding roll in the development of Rag Time:
Most people instinctively assign it to the Negro; but the Indian also, according to Natalie Curtis Burlin (1875-1921), is to be credited with a hand in it. The syncopation, which is a predominant feature of all Rag Time,as she observes in ‘The Craftsman’, is an absolutely essential element in the songs of our North American Indians of many tribes.
Also discussed are the efforts of Geoffrey O’Hara to make the earliest recordings of Native American Music on behalf of the U.S. Library of Congress.
The Influence of the Natives on Rag Time Music (The Literary Digest, 1913) Read More »
A short article on the topic Native American music and the studies of Alice Cunningham Fletcher (1838 – 1923), who had overseen a number of Native American archival recording sessions around the time this article appeared in print. Fletcher once wrote:
We find more or less of it in Beethoven and Schubert, still more in Schumann and Chopin, most of all in Wagner and Liszt.
Unsuspected Qualities of Indian Music (Literary Digest, 1908) Read More »
A collection of opinions gathered from the newspapers of the world concerning the belligerency of Imperial Japan and its poor standing in the eyes of the League of Nations:
Feeling grows among the Japanese that events are shaping toward a second world war, with Japan in the position that Germany occupied in 1914…A Canadian Press dispatch from London, in THE NEW YORK TIMES, estimated war supplies sent from England to China and Japan. According to statistics of the British Government for 1932, the largest individual items were 7,735,000 small-arms cartridges for China and 5,361,450 for Japan…Japan also purchased 740 machine guns.
Four years after the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese newspaper editorial expressed deep regret for Japan’s aggressiveness in the Second World War, click here to read about it…
Click here to read about a 1925 novel that anticipated the war with Imperial Japan.
Japan and the Road to War (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
Uncle’ Hermann to the masses, ‘Our’ Hermann to the army and big business, Col. Gen. Hermann Wilhelm Goering (1893 – 1946) last week became economic dictator and virtual Vice-Chancellor of the Third Reich.
Adolf Hitler dropped into his brawny, outstretched arms full power to carry out the gigantic plan which aims at making the Nazi State economically self-sufficient [in four years].
Hermann Goering Named as ‘Economic Dictator’ (Literary Digest, 1936) Read More »
Uncle’ Hermann to the masses, ‘Our’ Hermann to the army and big business, Col. Gen. Hermann Wilhelm Goering (1893 – 1946) last week became economic dictator and virtual Vice-Chancellor of the Third Reich.
Adolf Hitler dropped into his brawny, outstretched arms full power to carry out the gigantic plan which aims at making the Nazi State economically self-sufficient [in four years].
Hermann Goering Named as ‘Economic Dictator’ (Literary Digest, 1936) Read More »
