On May 17th the Sligo Adventist School celebrates its 90th birthday.
And 90 years ago today, May 15th, the first airmail stamps were issued: 24 cents per ounce. Regular stamps were three cents/oz and remarkably went down, yes down, in price in 1919 - to two cents.
The price of food? In pennies: bread 9.8; butter 57.7; eggs 56.9; milk (delivered) 27.8; sugar 45.5.
Average wages? enlisted military $870/yr; officers $2,698; people working in trade $941; in services $571 (includes medical-$520 domestic-$432 education-$721); federal civilian government $1,415.
(All the above from Historic Statistics of the United States)
Events? Wilson's 14 points; Plank's Nobel Prize for the quantum theory; Russian civil war and execution of the Czar's family; air battles with the Red Baron; End of WWI - Armistice signed; influenza that killed millions worldwide
(from Chronicles of the 20th Century)
What were the soldiers singing?
K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy.
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore.
When the m-moon shines over the cowshed.
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.
(see The Annals of America, vol. 14 where you can also find an interpretation of the 14 points, a 1918 poem by Carl Sandburg, Thurber's University Days and Draft Board Nights, and many other primary documents of the time.)
Posted by library at May 15, 2008 05:45 PM