Accidental Ascension of two Children in a Balloon
“On Friday, a man named Wilson made an ascension from the fair grounds at Centralia, Illinois. . . . [T]o amuse his children [the farmer] placed them in the basket car. . . . Unexpectedly the grappling iron slipped from the father's hand, and the balloon with its precious freight was wafted out of sight. . . . [T]he whole neighboring country was placed on the alert to watch for the balloon. . . . The youthful aerial voyagers were in the balloon about thirteen hours and a quarter.”

This news item from the St. Louis Republican was reprinted in The Country Gentleman, October 7, 1858, one of the titles recently added to the digital collection American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries (APCRL).   

American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries (APCRL) is the result of a collaboration with ProQuest to digitize a portion of CRL’s American historical journals collection. CRL has already provided more than 1.6 million pages of content for the project. When completed, the collection will contain full text and full-color scans of nearly three million pages.  

As part of an effort to expand digital access to collections and ensure the survival of “last copies” of important primary source materials, all CRL libraries have interlibrary loan access on a volume-by-volume basis to the APCRL content. For those libraries choosing to purchase this collection, a charter price is available now through December 31, 2009. Please contact a ProQuest account representative to receive a price quote, or to request a free trial.