What Philadelphians Were Reading 232 Years Ago

Here’s your post-Independence Day special: Slate flags the October 24th, 1781 edition of a colonial-era Philadelphia newspaper called The Freeman’s Journal: Or, the North-American Intelligencer. Address: “Market-Street, between Third and Fourth-Streets.”

Splashed across the front page that day was an article depicting Gen. George Washington’s crucial defeat of Gen. Cornwallis at Yorktown, which set in motion the eventual British defeat.

As Slate points out, the use of any font larger than eight points was exceedingly rare at the time, suggesting that publisher Francis Bailey realized this victory was a big f-ing deal. Also: Lots of unnecessary hyphens.

Source: Freeman’s Journal, October 24, 1781. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society, Newspaper Collection.