September 25

In the late 17th century, in Boston, Massachusetts, Richard Pierce and Benjamin Harris tried to put out a newspaper with the ambitious name of "Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick". Their intent was to publish a monthly newspaper with multiple pages as a counterpoint to the broadsides that were widely published in the North American colonies. This would be the first newspaper published in the Americas. The broadsides were large sheets of paper that had news items printed on them that were published by affixing them to what were essentially bulletin boards. Pierce and Harris intended for their newspaper to have 10 pages of all the news fit to print, focusing on meeting the needs of all the enquiring minds lurking in the shadows of late 17th century North America. The paper was supposed to be published “monthly, or if any glut of occurrences happen, oftener”. The newspaper, in spite of their best intentions, had only three pages when it made its first and only appearance on the 25th in 1691.