The Daily Dose of Deana: The Oldest Newspaper We Have - The Weekly Atlanta Constitution from 1895!

OK, I think I'm finally ready to tackle showing you this disintegrating Weekly Atlanta Constitution newspaper from Monday, August 19, 1895! It's the last one that Jamie had salvaged from that old house years ago.

The newspaper is in extremely poor shape (well, it is almost 119 years old, after all), and what pages that we do have are in tatters. It's incredibly fragile, but also incredibly interesting!

The first thing I noticed about this newspaper was how microscopically tiny the print was. I wondered how in the world anybody could read it without straining their eyes. I've zoomed it all in so you can see it without having to squint.

These days, this newspaper is called the "AJC", or "Atlanta Journal-Constitution". Apparently, they used to be two separate newspapers -- the Atlanta Journal, and the Atlanta Constitution, and they merged at some point in the past.

Here are all of the things from the ancient newspaper that I thought was interesting.

This portion of the front cover shows part of the elaborate and old-fashioned-style newspaper title, and you can see the date and price.

You would expect the front cover to contain major headlines, but this newspaper first starts out with a really long fiction story, and then has an article about Japan!

Interestingly, in the fiction story, I noticed a typo. A portion of it is upside-down!:

The article about Japan, titled 'Japan And Her Customs' is of course extremely un-politically-correct! Here are some excerpts:

O__o

I know, right? Can you imagine a newspaper trying to print anything even remotely like this today? WOW.

And now for some old-timey ads! By the way, remember how the ads from 1940 alluded to the fact that everybody must have been constipated all the time? Well, back in 1895, they had quite different (and a lot more embarrassing than just simple constipation) medical problems indeed, as you will see further down:

Note: Just in case you didn't know, the disease they called "consumption" back then was really tuberculosis:

The following one is my personal favorite. It's basically the old-time version of today's frustrated woman telling a dopey man "Do I have to draw it out for you with a crayon?!?":

LOL!!!

Hmm...I wonder if they still offer these...I might need to order some for Jamie...! (Like they would help)...! :P

Back then, the articles were much more exciting, in that they contained a lot more (and usually gory) details. Below are the articles and tidbits that I found particularly interesting or funny:

Yep, that's right. Queen Victoria. She lived for almost 6 more years after this newspaper was published.

...and we thought that this kind of thing only happened in this day and age...!

This was a sad (but still interesting) article:

Here's the painting that the article above refers to:

This next article is interesting because it has to do with neighboring towns of ours:

Here's a little-known fact about Deana: I hate monkeys.

...thanks for the tip (I think?)...

Here are a couple of dorky, old-fashioned jokes:

I know; they're real knee-slappers. :/

And now, for some violent news (the first story's actually pretty funny):

Here's another sad article:

And now, more violence!:

The next article is crazy. And what I thought was even wilder about it was that when it says 'back in the forties', you've gotta remember that it's talking about the 1840s!

Like I said before, it's interesting to read the articles from this old newspaper, because they're so full of detail. The following article about a train wreck is riveting. You feel like you're in the middle of the action. It's like reading an exciting fiction story. (Too bad it wasn't just made-up)! :(