Hank Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac convertible on the way to play a concert in Ohio. A few days later thousands gathered to pay respects to the country music superstar. Here is the story of that day in 1953.
Crowdsourcing. Yes, I too thought of it as two words, but in 2006 Merriam-Webster defined crowdsourcing as a noun meaning the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Read about how a Canadian university librarian is using crowdsourcing to identify images found on previously unidentified real-photo postcards. Then prepare yourself to participate in a similar experiment right here at postcardhistory.net.
Postcard History is a free online magazine dedicated to vintage and historic picture postcards and the many stories associated with them.
We feature richly illustrated articles designed to both inform and entertain postcard collectors and history buffs.
We also provide the most comprehensive listing of forthcoming shows around.
And there’s a rich trove of links to institutional and personal online postcard collections. There’s also a comprehensive, verified listing of active postcard clubs in the U. S. and Canada, which we’re working on expanding worldwide.
Who among us doesn’t know the poem that begins “There are strange things done in the midnight sun, by the men who moil for gold”? “In a Few Words,” our short-articles section, has a real-photo postcard of the author, Robert Service, in front of his cabin in Canada’s Yukon Territory where he lived from 1895 to 1912. It’s the unusual story of a would-be cowboy who became a banker and then a poet celebrated as “the Bard of the Yukon,” whose poems sing to even those who don’t like poetry.
New Orleans is a city well presented in the postcard world and our review of the recently-published book “Postmarked New Orleans” points out that “the postcards in nearly every case in Jason N. A. Smith’s book are more appealing than the photographs.” NOLAphiles will want to add this charming book to their libraries. Hurry if you’re interested, the supply is low – but our friends at Amazon.com are here to help.
Brexit is getting done, but when this article was published in 2017, shortly after the referendum that started the process succeeded, the campaign was still fresh in Britain’s mind. “Me and EU: Postcards from a divided nation,” showcases the efforts of an artistic collaborative opposed to Brexit but comes with the hopeful tag that “even though we are leaving, let’s keep talking.”
Picture postcards from the first two decades of the 20th century are among the most striking souvenirs from the past that link the Philippines and the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Philippine cards were printed or made directly from photographs. Thousands were sent through the mail, but possibly even more were kept as souvenirs and placed in albums. Many of these have survived in collections around the world, but the largest collections are in the United States. This article from “PositivelyFilipino.com” shows a small but interesting sample of these cards.
The decline of big-city newspapers has spawned the growth of big-city online newspapers. Despite slimmer finances, the online papers can produce quality articles. The online Chicago Morning Star here presents “40 Illinois Postcards: Centenary Rarities and Computer Graphics,” drawn from the exhibits of the Chicago Postcard Museum. They’re worth a look.
The city of Christchurch in New Zealand is perched on the Avon River. The river was once so clean that “people would pay to bathe in it. The public baths on the Avon opened in 1877 and cost three pence to use, with changing rooms on the riverbank and a tall corrugated iron fence acted as a modesty screen. Civic pride being what it is, this and other information about historical sites in the city have popped up on new postcards produced as part of the Beca Heritage Festival which was held last Autumn (2019). An interesting twist is that, instead of selling the cards, they were placed at no charge around the city in various cafes and other venues.
If your name is Campbell, Gordon, Fraser or any one of more than forty Scottish Clan names, you may find your family’s tartan (Please, don’t call it plaid.) on a Tuck Postcard. Between 1908 and 1912 Tuck & Sons published 42 different cards in seven sets of six cards each. If you are your family’s genealogist, your story is not complete until you find your Tuck Tartan.
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