~ TID BITS

BUCKS COUNTY

1919 -

The Great White Hurricane

Today's useless fact - When in American history was it a crime to criticize the president?

 It was during the second half of John Adams's administration, which has become known as the Federalist Reign of Terror. Under the Alien and Sedition Acts, it became a crime to criticize the president or the government. It got so bad that his vice president, Thomas Jefferson, stopped signing his letters, correctly assuming that government agents were reading his mail. More than twenty newspaper editors and a member of the House of Representatives were jailed. (Representative Matthew Lyon got four months in jail and a $1,000 fine for writing an editorial in a Vermont newspaper; his constituents re-elected him while he was in jail and paid his fine.) The law finally expired after Jefferson became president.

~source used: "Just Curious about History, Jeeves" by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo

THE CHAMPION CUCUMBER RAISER

Mrs. Josiah DOWEY claims to be the champion cucumber raiser of Lehigh county, having a cucumber thirteen inches long and measuring eleven and a half inches in circumference. She has some that are very nearly as large and claims they are about three-fourth grown. They have been raised on good Republican soil she says.

Ref: Town and Country Newspaper
Pennsburg, Montgomery County, PA
Saturday - August 20, 1904