A Thought at the Close of Earth Day

Regular readers know that day by day I am searching the newspapers from 1917 for items that provide insight into life on the home front--specifically Hudson--during the U.S. involvement in the Great War, World War I. Sometimes, though, I stumble upon fascinating things that are not related to the war but to the influenza pandemic that no one in the spring of 1917 could have known would happen in the late fall of 1918. This is an example--an image that appeared in the Hudson Evening Register for April 18, 1917.

It was not an advertisement for a painter, a paint store, or a particular brand of paint. It was a public service announcement. Ironically, the paint believed in 1917 to kill all germs is today a major public health hazard because it contained lead.
COPYRIGHT 2017 CAROLE OSTERINK