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As the year began, General Sherman's army began it's march through the Carolinas; four months later Richmond fell and President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. On May tenth the victorious Union army marched in review down Pennsylvania Avenue and at month's end, Kirby Smith and his rebel forces surrendered in the West.

It was argued that slavery in the United States did not end in 1865...

The Star of THE OUTLAW (Pic Magazine, 1943)

Those cheeky, ill-informed editors at PIC MAGAZINE impertinently protested that the Howard Hughes' movie The Outlaw should have been in the theaters ages ago - failing all the while to recognize that the film had been released a week prior to the publication of their article.

But they made up for it by providing their readers with six seldom-seen cheesecake pictures of the star, Jane Russell.


Why Is God So Silent? (Jesus People, 1973)

Frederic W. Farrar (1831 - 1903), Dean of Canterbury Cathedral during the last eight years of the Victorian era saw fit to examine God's silence and seeming indifference while humanity struggles:

"Look at all the myriads of mankind who have lived only as the beast live, and have died as the fool dies".

"God makes no ado. He does not defend Himself. He suffers men to blaspheme. His enemies make a murmuring but he refrains. And much of what is said is awfully true - for those who utter it. To men, to nations, God is silent; there is no God. Their ears are closed so that they cannot hear. They who love the darkness have it. To those who will not listen, God does not speak."


The Onslaught of Standardized Tests (World Week, 1958)

Written in 1958 with the aid of the Educational Testing Service, (Princeton, New Jersey), the article attempted to persuade America's high school students to get used to standardized tests because they're a really cool idea and they'll make your life better. Illustrations are provided to indicate how the testing work and how well such tests had proved useful to the Air Force in weeding out sub-standard candidates for flight training. The journalist seemed to imply throughout these columns that the egg-heads were really doing us all a big, big favor by creating these tests.


The Comic Book Industry: Tweleve Years Old in 1945 (Yank Magazine, 1945)

This is an article about the 1940s comic book industry and the roll it played during W.W. II.

The writer doesn't spell it out for us, but by-and-by it dawned on us that among all the various "firsts" the World War Two generation had claim to, they were also the first generation to read comic books. Although this article concentrates on the wartime exploits of such forties comic book characters as Plastic Man and Blackhawk, it should be remembered that the primary American comic book heroes that we remember today were no slackers during the course of the war; Superman smashed the Siegfried Line prior to arresting Hitler as he luxuriated in his mountain retreat; Batman selflessly labored in the fields of counterintelligence while Captain America signed-up as a buck private.

Click here to read an article about the predecessor to the American comic book: the "dime novel".

If you would like to read a W.W. II story concerning 1940s comic strips and the failed plot to assassinate General Eisenhower, click here.


African-Americans During the Great Depression (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Written during the later years of the Great Depression, these columns summarize the sad lot of America's Black population - their hardships, ambitions, leadership, and where they tend to live.

"When the Depression struck, Negroes were the first to lose their jobs. Today, 1,500,000 colored adults are unemployed."

A 1938 article about the hardships of the Southern States during the Great Depression can be read here...

Click here to learn about the origins of the term "Jim Crow".

Tony Randall: Movie Star (Pageant Magazine,1964)

In this early Sixties article, celebrity epistolarianne Cyndi Adams recalled her first two encounters with the man who would be "Felix Unger":

"'I am definitely neurotic and psychotic,' cheerily announced Tony Randall (1920 - 2004) the first time we met - 'he's an actor-comedian of remarkable skills...he unconsciously reflects, in the way he plays his rolls, so much of the neurotic age we live in...'".

The NEW YORK TIMES would pursue this point to a further degree in their 2004 obituary of the actor:

"That's the force Tony Randall embodied: he represented, in his neurotic grandeur, our national will to unhappiness. Or if not our will, at least our right, which in the 50's we were only beginning to realize we could exercise."


Outraged Soldiers and Marines (U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1944)

That administering government agency charged with the management of the Japanese-American internment camps was the War Relocation Authority, which was an arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Much to their credit, in 1944, this bureaucracy saw fit to published a small booklet containing the letters of many outraged American servicemen who vented their anger on the subject that their fellow Americans were being singled-out for persecution:

"...I'm putting it mildly when I say that it makes my blood boil...We shall fight this injustice, intolerance and un-Americanism at home! We will not break faith with those who died...We have fought the Japanese and are recuperating to fight again. We can endure the hell of battle, but we are resolved not to be sold out at home."


The Merger of Austria With Germany (Ken Magazine, 1938)

Here is an article about Austria's Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg (1897 - 1977) and how the merger of Austria and Nazi Germany came about in 1838:

"Behind the scenes that hard day at Berchtesgaden, revealing what Hitler said to Kurt Schuschnigg and what the Austrian public never knew about the German plot to stage in Vienna a counterpart of the Reichstag fire, as a pretext for invasion. Schuschnigg spoiled that pretext, only to furnish another one himself. Uncovering the plot in the hope of averting invasion he merely brought it on."