The Southern Lancaster County Historical Society will host a celebration of Robert Fulton on Saturday, Sept. 26, at the Robert Fulton Birthplace on Route 222, six miles south of Quarryville.
The event, celebrating Fulton’s 1807 trip up the Hudson River on the steamboat “Clermont,” will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will  include music, food, reenactments, […]

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Last week, I wrote about electric cars that were sold at a downtown Lancaster dealership in 1909.
Today, I learned that old electric cars will be a major feature of this year’s Kutztown Folk Festival in Berks County, from June 27 to July 5.
A number of early electric vehicles will be on display at the festival. Many […]

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Last year, the Lititz Car Co. began selling Zap brand electric cars and trucks that can travel up to 40 mph and go 25 miles between battery charges. It was a big new thing for Lancaster County…..sort of.
Turns out that 100 years ago, you could buy an electric car on East King Street that went about 15 mph […]

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When people talk about “old-fashioned winter weather,” what era, exactly, are they referring to?
The 1930s?
The 1950s?
Or simply whichever era was previous to the present one?
Maybe some clips from the New Era archives can shed some light on the matter:
“An old-fashioned, snow-to-the-knees winter storm swept into Lancaster County his morning,” read the lead of a February […]

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Here’s an interesting little article that was published in the New Era on Dec. 12, 1958.
It’s an Associated Press piece reporting on predictions by America’s top industrial and business leaders on what life would be like in 1987.
Among the most accurate of the predictions is that everyone would have pocket telephones, although it took a little longer than […]

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New concerns about an old threat
In the years following the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Western officials have been increasingly concerned about the possible development and use of small, portable nuclear devices.
A small nuclear weapon, or a so-called “dirty bomb,” in which nuclear material is combined with a conventional explosive, could be packaged in something as small […]

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Quiz time: When was the following statement written?
“If there was ever occasion to consider the wisdom of conserving any of the mineral treasures with which the country has been endowed and of hunting for serviceable substitutes, the policy is certainly applicable to petroleum in an extreme degree.”
Was the statement made earlier this year? Or in […]

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“Seeding” not a new idea
In the lead-up to the Olympics, there’s been a lot of discussion about China’s efforts to alter the weather in Beijing, seeking to “seed” clouds so that rain would wash away smog, and, conversely, trying to dissipate clouds, when desired, to keep rain from interfering with athletic competitions.
The effectiveness of such efforts remains a topic of […]

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Foreseeing a bright, if distant, future
Hey, where’s this guy when we need him? Dr. Robert H. Goddard was a famous rocket scientist (the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is named in his honor), but he was talking about solar-powered cars and planes in this United Press article that ran in the New Era on Oct. 2, […]

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