From the Archives of Western Newspapers

By Samantha Johnson
For Southern Alberta Newspapers

March 14, 1884 – Prince Albert Times and Saskatchewan Review

In Montreal, the severest snowstorm of the season set in last evening and still continues. The snow is seven to eight feet deep in some streets of the city.

In London, another attempt was made to blow up Waterloo Station today. The luggage was overhauled and orders issued to refuse suspicious parcels.

One of the latest mixed drinks popular in Edmonton these days is equal parts Canadian Pain Destroyer and yellow oil. No name has been coined for this tony beverage, the English language not being sufficiently expressive.

March 12, 1909 – Coleman Miner

As the earth keeps cooling, it will become porous and great cavities will form in the interior that will take in the water. It is believed this process is already in progress with the water diminishing from the surface at the rate of the thickness of a sheet of paper each year. At this rate, in 6 million years the water will have sunk a mile and in 15 million years, it will have disappeared from the face of the earth. Oxygen and nitrogen in the air are also diminishing and at some point the air will be too thin to breath.

People just now are living in a state of almost morbid apprehension concerning what they should eat and drink, Lord Ribblesdale said in the House of Lords. There has been the paleolithic age and the sandstone age. The present age will come to be known as the bacillus, microbe and tubercle age.

In Pincher, the moving picture show at the schoolhouse last Saturday was not the howling success expected. The machine was not in proper working order and quite a number of the films were indistinct. This, together with numerous delays, was trying on the audience.

March 13, 1914 – Empress Express

G.M. Johnston of Medicine Hat made a petition for a hotel license that is making the rounds and he proposes to put it next door to the Union Bank on Centre Street. The ruling of the licensing commission is already affording much speculation. The town needs a hotel badly and whichever way the commission looks at the various applications before them and the quicker they get down to business and decide who gets the first license, the better for the town and the more respect people will have for the commission. The lack of a hotel has been a real setback for the town and the question has led to much discussion among citizens.

Twins who were called up to service in Paris look so alike it is difficult to tell them apart, resulting in one brother, who was confined to barracks, being able to leave by changing his cap and regimental number. The colonel has issued new orders such that all men with even regimental numbers must wear their hair as long as regulations allow and shave their beard and mustache. Soldiers with odd regimental numbers will allow their beard and mustache to grow and have their hair regularly cut as closely as possible.

Denny made the first automobile trip from Empress to Medicine Hat last Thursday with the trip taking nine hours. He returned Monday and managed that one in six hours.