Today in history: December 7, 1941

Here is a cool fact about my home state, little Rhode Island:

There is only one newspaper in the United States that comes out on Sunday afternoon, (as opposed to Sunday morning) and that is the local paper for Westerly, (a small town in Rhode Island), called The Westerly Sun.

Because The Westerly Sun comes out at the odd time of 3 pm on Sunday – it was the only newspaper in the entire country to report the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941 – on the day it actually happened. If you look at that NY Times front page, the date, naturally, is December 8, since it didn’t go to the presses until the afternoon of December 7.

The Westerly Sun is a teeny little local newspaper … and it was the FIRST and ONLY one on that day of days.

I am picturing that tiny clapboard newspaper office in Westerly, off route 1 … a place I have driven by many times … a newspaper with a miniscule circulation. It is a Sunday morning and the staff of the newspaper, who normally report on school committee meetings and water board issues and the local police beat are all there, on the forefront, putting the front page together on that historic awful day.