A Great History Gift Idea
4 min readFor those of you looking to get the perfect gift for your history loving husband, or Civil War reenacting cousins, here is a great history gift idea. I received a package last week in the mail, much faster than I had anticipated. Well, not that fast. I mean, it did have to travel across the pond. This considered, it arrived tout de suite. I know, I know…by now you cannot wait to hear what it is. It was paper. Actually, paper wrapped in protective paper, in a box inside of another box. I open the first box, and what did I see…
That’s right, a pretty box that said, “A Day To Remember.” Any guesses? I will give you a hint…
How cool would it be to own a piece of history; in fact, not only history, but a secondary source dating back over 100 years?
That’s right–a newspaper!
Historic Newspapers, a website that deals in the selling of original newspapers, has these. The site is easy to navigate and boast to have “over 6 million newspapers.” Historic Newspapers has newspapers dating back 200 years, and claim they “are proud and privileged to own the largest private archive of British newspapers in the world.” You don’t need me to copy and paste more facts from their site. If you want a great history gift idea, go check them out for yourself!
I requested two articles; one was a broad request (within a certain date range), and the other for an article covering a specific event.
The first paper, the ‘surprise paper,’ was left to the discretion of Historic Newspapers. I specified that, “I enjoy history regarding Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Generally, my history interest is post World War I.” To this the representative replied:
I am confident that I will be able to source some material covering the requested event and topics so please leave this with me.
I mean, who are we kidding. I am sure that is just an automated response that everyone gets; however, he hit a home-run. He had every reason to be “confident” because he succeeded–beyond my wildest dreams!
So here is the first newspaper. The Times, Late London Edition. In case you cannot read the date across the top, here is a close-up.
November 11, 1938. If you scan the first few pages of the paper, it doesn’t seem like a busy day. The front page has sections: Deaths, Personal, Christmas Gift, Business Offers, etc. It isn’t until the middle of the newspaper when you get to the articles worth reading. (It seems really weird to me that this is how a newspaper was formatted. There is no catchy headline, nor any breaking news.)
My first thought was, “How cool, I have a newspaper that is seventy-four (74) years old.” Then I went on to the next paper. (You will hear about that paper in the next few days. I have a special announcement about the importance of the second paper.) It wasn’t until later that I took the first paper back out and started to read all the headlines.
The first few pages were rather boring, but about ten pages in, I started seeing interesting headlines. In fact, headlines that coincided with what I had requested. The Nazi Germany / Holocaust type articles that I had been looking for were all under the “Imperial and Foreign” category. The first of these was an article with the headline The Jews in Italy (Left).
On the adjacent page, there was an article about a Nazi arrested by the Swiss Federal police (right). I felt as if I was getting closer to the good stuff.
Sure enough, by page thirteen (13) it hit me. Having written an article or two about a particular event that occurred on November 9th and 10th, of this year, I cannot believe that I hadn’t made the potential connection sooner; Kristallnacht. If you aren’t familiar with the events of Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of the Broken Glass, go buy a newspaper, then come back and check out my article on Kristallnacht.
Yes, it was here! Article after article about Kristallnacht. I now have my own secondary source on Kristallnacht. Below is a picture of some articles.
Overall, I’m thrilled with the newspapers and highly recommend that you go buy one–or two–for yourself. Or at least In the next few days, when you go to make your holiday wish list, remember this great history gift idea.
What is the best part? Discounts…I received a discount code with my newspapers that I can give to anyone, that can be used as many times as you desire! When you go to check out, use the discount code 15TODAY.
Don’t forgot, there were two papers, so check back later to find out about the other one.
That’s a cool gift idea. What kind of condition are they in, though? I’d hate to buy something like that and when I tried to read it have it fall apart into little tiny moldy pieces.
Oh man, they are in great shape. Really high quality stuff. BTW, nice post about the Zombie Apocalypse.
Cool Idea!!! There are various options available in market when it comes to buying business gifts. You can also personalize gifts and can imprint the name of your business on the gift item.