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June 14, 2009

Front Pages Free from NewspaperArchive

This is very interesting - another freebie from NewspaperARCHIVE.com They've unlocked every front page of their newspapers, which means you can look through millions of unique newspaper front pages.

Just tick off the box labeled "Front Pages Only", type your word or phrase into the Keyword spot and your search will return results from newspapers from 1759 to 2008. You can read about the very first time man set foot on the moon, or President Kennedy's assination.

Maybe you're a military buff or an ancestor fought in WW1 or WW2 or Korea or Vietnam - or some other skirmish. If so, try searching for the name of the War or battle. Just for an idea of what is available I typed in "Korean War" This is what I got!

We discovered 231,272 results for Korean war in our Front Pages I would have to narrow my search to make it feasible to read some of the Front page stories so I would put a year of interest, perhaps even a month. That's easy to do by using the Refine Your Search fields on the right side of the Results Page.

One of my great great uncles Stephen Peer walked Niagara Falls on a tightrope and has the dubious distinction of being the only person to die falling from his tightrope, so I decided to search for anything about him. I used "Niagara Falls tightrope Peer" as my keywords. I got 2 results for Front Page news and a notice that there were 80 other results for my search in inside pages!

One result from the Front Pages was from an 1887 newspaper, the other more recent so I knew the 1887 was probably the one I wanted. And sure enough there it was on the front page of the Semi-Weekly Statesman in Marshall Michigan - the headline read

A TRAGIC AFFAIR: Steve Peer A Daring Rope-Walker Killed at Niagara Falls

I copied and saved the article by using the Graphic Select Tool which is to the right of the Text Selector. This Front page article is the first one I've seen that mentioned the possibility of suicide in Stephen's death, so it was interesting from a historical AND a genealogical viewpoint.

Have fun discovering what Front Page News is there at your fingertips on NewspaperARCHIVE.com .

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