by Kimberly Lerch | Published: June 18, 2020 October of 1918, the fourth week.[1] At the beginning of last week, they closed the Urbana and, a day later, the Champaign public schools. The state stepped in and forced the closure of all non-essential businesses and any schools that did not have a nurse on-site. By […]
Category: Uncategorized
Five Weeks in October: Week Four
June 18, 2020
Five Weeks in October: Week Three
June 17, 2020
by Kimberly Lerch | Published: June 17, 2020 October of 1918, the third week.[1] At the beginning of last week, “places of amusement” were ordered closed, only one church service was allowed per week, but residents’ children were still expected to attend school. Folks were becoming increasingly concerned by the flu directly affecting their community; […]
Five Weeks in October: Week Two
June 16, 2020
by Kimberly Lerch | Published: June 16, 2020 October of 1918, its second week.[1] At the beginning of last week, residents in Champaign County felt safe; not a case to be mentioned in the Urbana Daily Courier. Then, local folks had relatives in other locations become flu victims. By the end of the week, there […]
Five Weeks in October: Week One
June 15, 2020
by Kimberly Lerch | Published: June 15, 2020 In March 1918, what was later known to be the “first wave” of the Spanish influenza in the United States began quietly in Kansas as small outbreaks of a flu-like illness. At Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas, approximately 100 soldiers suddenly fell ill from the flu. […]
The Spanish Influenza versus COVID-19
June 8, 2020
by Kimberly Lerch | Published: June 8, 2020 Imagine being able to sit down with the Surgeon General of the United States during the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918 and a top doctor from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the current COVID-19 crisis at the same time and ask them a […]
Cooking with Salsify
June 4, 2020
by Kimberly Lerch | Published: June 4, 2020 As promised, I present to you not only some representative recipes taken from the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections highlighting the Rodney Dangerfield of vegetables, salsify, but pictures of the dishes and opinions of those lucky enough to eat and critique them! Salsify recipes are aplenty; when I […]
Forgotten Colonial Vegetable–Salsify
May 20, 2020
by Kimberly Lerch | Published: May 20, 2020 While correcting text for the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (IDNC), I discovered an article in the June 15, 1918 issue of the Chicago Packer that covered a partial ban of some American produce into Canada. I believe the ban had more to do with World War I […]
Illinois Newspaper Project Interviews James P. Danky
February 29, 2020
by Jerilyn P. Tinio | Published: February 29, 2020 In 2019, James P. Danky received the American Journalism Historians Association’s Distinguished Service to Journalism History Award for his 40 years spent expanding and diversifying serial collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Danky is editor of the indispensable reference tool, African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (Cambridge: […]
New Titles: African American Historical Newspapers
February 17, 2020
Published: February 17, 2020 The Illinois Newspaper Project (INP) announces titles available soon on Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (IDNC) and Chronicling America. Funded by a grant received in 2018 from the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), these additions mark the beginning of a series of new titles selected in line with INP’s proposed theme: communities […]
Periodic Dose of Cute – Cat Anecdotes Edition
January 20, 2020
Since the rise of the internet a common joke has always been that the internet is meant for cat gifs. Be it your cousin’s boyfriend posting incessantly about their cat’s every movement or the trending page on YouTube, it is often hard to get away from cute stories about cats. This apparently has long been […]