posts

Blame it on a literal reading of the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1834, the New Hampshire state legislature granted a charter to found Noyes Academy in the rural Town of Canaan. Because the...

In 1890 the Paiute shaman Wovoka gained a reputation among Western tribes as a visionary and teacher. Central to his teaching was the Ghost Dance which, properly practiced, would halt the expansion of...

Between early August and early November of 1793 almost ten percent of the population of Philadelphia died after contracting Yellow Fever. At that time Philadelphia was the capital of the young nation...

In 1895 at least one death was ascribed to a work of fiction. Its overwhelming influence was described in viral terms before viruses were well understood as biological let alone social phenomena. That...

L’Auto Bolide is the very latest, the most startling thing in the world of loop-the-loop. It is an achievement formidable, thrilling, marvellous—the sort of thing that makes the beholder stop...

The story of immigration to the United States is essential to understanding the country’s history. One excellent source for researching this history is Readex’s Ethnic American Newspapers from the...

That there were witches in the olden times is true, else the Bible fights against shadows: for it tells us not once but many times that there were witches. According to printed sources dating to the...

Opening doors to digital humanities research, Readex Text Explorer is an end-to-end set of workflow tools to help students and faculty analyze texts in new ways. Its data visualization methods include...

This unique digital resource represents the most comprehensive record of Native America in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. Featuring text analysis tools, author biographies, and suggested...

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on the account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by...

In January 1919 the influenza pandemic continued to sweep through the United States seemingly unabated. On New Year’s Day the Augusta Chronicle published the advertisement for a preventative tonic...

The earliest American sermons were largely delivered by the most erudite men in the Protestant colonies. These eminent divines were concentrated in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where their influence...

In early 1919 San Francisco was on the brink of a third wave of influenza. On January 10 of that year the San Jose Mercury Herald reported on the increasing number of deaths under the headline, “Masks...

The advent of motion picture industry at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was explosive. The American public was besotted by the astonishing and cheap new entertainment. From the earliest days...

Nineteenth century European Romantic writers viewed tuberculosis as a fashionable disease. The slow but inexorable progression of the “white plague” (or consumption) and the austerity of the pale...

The history of enlightened treatment of the mentally ill in the United States was significantly affected by Dr. Benjamin Rush, the famed Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of...

There’s an entry in Readex’s Native American Indians, 1645-1819 , from a book printed in Philadelphia in 1803 in which British topographical engineer Captain Thomas Hutchins described the “Kahokia...

Perhaps you’ve explored Readex’s five Origins of Modern Science and Technology collections, which include material from the latter half of the twentieth century. For an earlier perspective on the...

Published accounts of the native peoples of North America in the late 18th and early 19 th centuries—as depicted in these wide-ranging early American imprints—were varied in accord with the beliefs of...

In June 1958, about eight months after the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite circled the globe, former Illinois governor and future United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson had an idea for another...

An updated version of this blog post (September 2024) is now available. For ten years or more, faculty and students have been asking Readex to “bring history to life” in new ways. “You have tremendous...

Among several common themes in early books for children, instruction in conduct recurs frequently. Searching American Children’s Books, 1654-1819, a new Readex database, whether using Suggested...

Last night one of the most magnificent atmospheric exhibitions that have ever been witnessed in this latitude took place. A display of the aurora borealis of surpassing extent and beauty occupied the...

You’re traveling to another dimension, north of Rutland, Vermont, to a place not only of sight and sound but of mind, on a journey to what was the epicenter of paranormal activity in 1870s America...