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OddlyTrue News Stand — June 20

One real weird headline, three odd happenings and a page from a 1918 newspaper. See the full Vintage News edition →

June 19June 21

From the archives

Verified Real

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says

Source: Newspapers.comView clipping source

Headline 11 of 27 in the Hall of Fame rotation.

Weird history on June 20

  • Battle of the Catalaunian Plains
    451 Weird

    Battle of Chalons: Flavius Aetius battles Attila the Hun. After the battle, which was inconclusive, Attila retreats. Despite suffering catastrophic losses that led to the collapse of their alliance with the Goths and the destruction of much of the Roman army, the Romans nevertheless proclaimed victory despite the lack of any clear military success.

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    Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

  • Watergate scandal
    1972 Oddly true

    Watergate scandal: An 18+1⁄2-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.

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    Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

  • Alexander Graham Bell
    1877 First ever

    Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

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    Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Vintage clipping

Baptist courier (Greenville, S.C.), June 20, 1918
Vintage clipping · 1918

Baptist courier (Greenville, S.C.), June 20, 1918

Page 2 · mentions "monster" · printed on this very day

“tree with a mouth like that of a horse with ears like the ears of an elephant He picked up the sailors one by one and inspected them as you would so many partridges When he found a fat sailor he ate him for dinner When h…”

Read the page at the Library of Congress

Image and text from the Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers site.

Hall of Fame headlines are manually verified clippings (source linked); nothing is scraped from Newspapers.com. Facts from Wikipedia On This Day API (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia. Clippings from the Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers site.