The City Record and Boston News-Letter is currently on vacation in an undisclosed location, but that won't stop us from occasionally posting. We found a copy of An Almanac for Bostonians 1939 at a used book dealer in Townsend, MA, and bought it as we were traveling to the aforementioned secure bunker/lake home. The almanac, which was compiled by the workers of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration in Massachusetts, is a compendium of useful and not so useful information about Boston, to wit:
4 August: Shirley Temple was made Admiral of the Swan Boat Fleet in the Public Garden in 1938.
5 August: On this day in 1877 there were 2332 licensed liquor purveyors in the city.
6 August: In 1855 the city was annoyed by a gang of rowdies who were breaking the monotony of the long summer evenings by beating up the police in Essex Street. Another minor irritation was the number of mosquitoes about. Favorite remedy was the application of moistened cigar ashes to the injured spot.
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