Posted inUS Civil War

June 8, 1863 – News From Vicksburg

[Special Dispatch to the Chicago Tribune.]
Cairo, June 7, 10 p. m.

The steamer Alice Dean, Capt. Pepper, bringing Vicksburg dates to Thursday, and Memphis dates to yesterday afternoon, arrived this evening.

An officer of the Alice Dean reports everything progressing as usual in the rear of Vicksburg. Sappers and miners are still burrowing in the hillside, gunboats and mortar boats are still operating, and new siege guns had opened fire on Thursday as had been anticipated, but with what result is not ascertained.

Sharpshooters still command the rebel works in the rear, and the Confederates are not allowed to show their heads without becoming the targets for hundreds of rifles.

Posted inAviation Daily News Travelers' Tales

Two Will Circle The Globe In 31 Days

New York May 19 (A.P.)—John Goldstrom, aviator, and E. Morris Titterington, pilot and mechanician, are out to reduce Jules Verne’s famous story “Around the World in Eighty Days’’ to 31 days.

Starting today on the Mauretania, they will follow a schedule expected to put them in Moscow a few hours after they take to the air near London.

From the Soviet capital to Yokohama they will follow the quickest and most direct route, possibly by both air and rail.

Posted inHumor US Civil War

June 6, 1863 – Editorial Excess

The whiskey in Chattanooga must be dreadful stuff, judging by its effect on the fancy of the editor of the Rebel. He says:

The North has at length reached this point of internal combustion. The entire entrails of its body politic are diseased through and through. The great veins and arteries which once poured such electric life and such a flow of pure blood into the national cerebellum are dried up and decayed. Festering sores and fatal boils have broken out in every part. The scarlet hues of inflammation are relieved only by the disgusting gashes and seams of mortification; whilst over all the great broad, brawny, stalwart skeleton and frame-work of law and constitution, that upheld the whole, is falling in broken fragments, and slipping off in bits of rotten bone. The end is certain, though it may be slow. We shall live to see the day when all that remains of the more thriving, aspiring, and wealthy half of the Union will be a few old bones whitening on the great waste common of nationality.

Posted inDaily News Local Histories Natural World

New England Shivers On A Cold And Frosty Morn In the Early Part of June

Boston. June 4.—(AP)—Winter lingering in the lap of summer brought frosts and low temperatures to various parts of New England today. Killing frosts nipped tender garden crops, causing losses to gardeners and farmers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

While frosts were reported in central and western Massachusetts, the mercury sank dangerously near the freezing point in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire. Ground temperatures as low as eight degrees below the freezing point were recorded in the cranberry bog region of southeastern Massachusetts.

Posted inColonization & Indigenous Relations

Forcing the Khyber Pass

Illustration of British infantry in close fighting with Afghan cavalry.

This defile, one of the most formidable and impenetrable in Asia, as a line of military defence, extends from Jumrood upwards in the direction of Jellalabad, without interval, for the space of twenty-eight miles, throughout twenty-two of which it has hitherto been reckoned impassable for an army, when the inhabitants had determined to oppose them. From Jumrood, where the pass opens on the Peshawar side, to Ali Musjid, the dell is deep and uninterrupted; and the celebrated fort, just named, which stands on an isolated hill, in the narrow, near the middle of the defile, completely commands it. Here it is so sickly that the troops we have endeavoured to keep in the fort have from time to time been nearly all swept away. For about seven miles beyond All Musjid, the ascent is somewhat uniform till it arrives near Lundee Khana, where for a couple of miles it stretches out to the face of a frightful precipice, like the galleries by which the Simplon is traversed.

Posted inUS Civil War

June 4, 1863 – Georgia And The Confederate Bonds

From the Rome (Ga.) Southerner.

The refusal of the Legislature to indorse Georgia’s share of the bonds will travel with the speed of electricity to the North, and from thence it will be carried on the wings of the wind throughout the civilized world. Will not our enemies consider this action of the Legislature the greatest victory for LINCOLN of the war? Can any more loans be negotiated in England and France, when these two great Powers are informed that Georgia is distrustful of the Confederate credit?