The Off Topic Topic

[HVC]

My takeaway so far is that it's good I never married, because I can't become a doomed widower.

We shall die as we lived!


 Alone

[Syt]

 

[Grey Fox]

With the advent of WFH, I find myself alone in my house. It is still weird to me.

[Valmy]

My takeaway so far is that it's good I never married, because I can't become a doomed widower.

My uncle lost his wife and he had been doing great and he is in his 80s. So it is not a death sentence.

[Syt]

With war in the news at all times now, I was curious how it was covered in the past.

The Austrian national archive has a fair number of newspapers archived till 1955 (many in their entirety), so I checked July 1863 to see what the reporting of the American Civil War and Gettysburg was.

Now, it took some browsing to figure out what the time delay was. Austrian international reporting was primarily focused on Polish uprisings in Russia, including diplomatic discussions about whether or not to intervene, with some speeches from the Houses of Parliament in London that called for/against Britain stepping in quoted in full on the matter. (Die Presse in 1863 generally seems to like quoting from British Parliament.)

By the 10th there were news about Lee's army moving into the North and that things were looking bleak for the Union and speculations about how this might go.

On the 13th Die Presse wrote that maybe there has already been a big clash in the Civil War, but that it's difficult to get any straight picture from fragmentary news and sift through exaggerations and misleading statements of the involved sides.

On the 14th it reported the news from July 1st(ish) that Hooker was relieved of his command by his request and various troop movement and rumors of command changes (McClellan taking over for Halleck) but that overall things are muddy.

It took till the 20th to get a report of the battleinto the papers. E.g. Die Presse gave it almost a full page (out of 8 or so total) about the battle itself in fairly comprehensive detail. A day later they're back to giving 20% of their space to the latest developments in The Polish Question.

Sidenote: one of the funnier finds was an article about the King of Hanover sending a telegram to the town of Stade, thanking them for their splendid hospitality a year prior, and wishing them all the best and God's blessing, getting almost the same space in the Wiener Zeitung of July 21st as Gettysburg.



Oh, and finding under "domestic news" Prague, Pest, Ragusa, Venice, Hermannstadt (now Sibiu) ...

Also, browsing through the papers I came across a short article about the Kingdom of Two Sicilies struggling to recruit for their military to fight against brigands and over 3500 people fleeing recruitment.

And there's sporadic news from Madagascar whose king had been murdered in May: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radama_II

The Militärzeitung had an article about the Englische Armee and their recruitment rules (number, how they're split between infantry (and how many of those are grenadiers or guards), cavalry etc.). I found it interesting that it distinguished between troops and officer pools  from Great Britain and Ireland, though I suppose that's because so did the Brits.

But a lot of it is budget discussions, who made what proposal and which aristocrat and/or diplomat is traveling where. Die Presse's financial news page is called "Der kleine Capitalist"

So over two weeks for battle reports to get from America to Viennese printers. Not sure if I prefer it over the breathless LIVE reporting these days.

Link to the archives: https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?zoom=33

[Norgy]

I love reading old digitalised newspapers. They are such a window into the past.

Been reading the 1933 editions of a few national papers in Norway. Let's say they were not unhappy about Hitler unless they were liberal or Labour.

This is my translation, so take it with a grain of salt.

"There are less Jews at Kurfürstendamm. No-one misses them. The streets are orderly. The people seem happier with the order of the new government".

This was from Aftenposten, a heavily conservative paper, known as "The Old Aunt". February 1933.

Tidens Tegn, what was supposedly the cultural newspaper, having several authors like Nordic noir pioneer Svein Elvestad on the staff, was more into Mussolini.

In the editorial the editor (duh) sings the praises of how Il Duce has lifted Italy out of crisis.

Tidens Tegn did not survive the peace after WW2. The editor was too compromised. On a brighter note, his son married a French lady, Anette, who became the foremost champion of asylum seekers here.

Journalism had very few rules back then. Reporting both sides? Fuck that. Just report what you see, and the editor will cut off the overflow if you can't write short. Think Hemingway. No flowery language. Paper costs, time is short.
The printers need time too.

[Syt]

Yeah, true. Pretty much all Austrian papers were "the poor, brave Poles" with regards to the uprising. And of course reporting on anything the Emperor or his family might say/do or what maladies they suffer from.

Was looking at an 1826 paper from Brünn/Brno. It had the previous day's weather, with the temperature in ... Réaumur. Hadn't heard that since my physics class ("You need Celsius and Kelvin in Physics, but there's other scales, like Fahrenheit or Réaumur, but they're not relevant for us.") (Apparently it was in use in German countries before switching to Celsius during the 19th century).

[Norgy]

I still don't remember what zero degrees Kelvin is unless I look it up. 

In local newspapers after WWII, I see this trend towards reporting what the wholesale price of different meats, fruits and grains is. Things are looking up.

Norway's newspaper were party affiliated until around the late 1990s. Just around when Fox News arrived, incidentally. It seems strange to a Norwegian that the British never broke up the party press with all the rest they broke.

Back in the 1950s, reporting on how many passengers the national railroads brought to the mountain resorts during Easter was big news, as was the weather expected. And the price of oranges.

Looking at old advertisements is also great fun. "Negro Bananas - The best, fresh off the boat". The banana ship is a big thing in post-war Norway, but one might be a little more coy about how they were harvested.

[Syt]

I didn't notice those, but I saw a large ad in an 1870 paper for a shop selling
- "Ink pens, specially manufactured, just like the ones Napoleon III used to write his history of Julius Caesar!"
- "Thootbrushes made from 'kautschuk' (raw rubber) - rubber it has inherent electric power that polishes your teeth!"
- "Galvanic bracelets to stimulate circulation."
- "For self protection - 6-shot revolvers with rifled barrelin calibers ranging from 7 to 12 mm!"
(One of these things is not like the others ... )

The 1850s-60s have a lot of ads for investing in coal mines and railroad enterprises. But (in German papers at least) advertising shipping/travel services from Hamburg to overseas. One 1850 paper had an article that it was still easy and cheap to buy land in Texas if one was enterprising and willing to move there.

[Duque de Bragança]

I had not heard of Réaumur in a long while; except the métro station in his honour (Réaumur-Sébastopol).

Caoutchouc is still the common French word for rubber in general, however. It's from a South American native language.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Caoutchouc is still the common French word for rubber in general, however. It's from an South American native language.

it's the dialect word for rubber in some of the Flemish dialects.

the same goes for the dialect word for bubble-gum: 'chiclette' => from chiclet (the brand) => from the nahuatl word.