Nobody Knows What Old Newspapers Were Going On About -The Toast

So I’ve been doing a lot of research for this book I’m writing (!!!! ?????), which has me poking around on ProQuest and old newspaper archives a lot, and I know we talk a lot about the sad state of Internet media a lot, but can we talk about the ridiculousness of old newspaper headlines? In a way I think they’re much worse, because at least on the Internet you don’t need to post anything if you have nothing to say (which I wish more places would remember), but in a newspaper you literally have pages to fill. So you get headlines and news items like this:

Because you know I’m all about that beef, ‘bout that beef, beef butter

Maybe the word had more heft to it in 1954.

Is this not the saddest headline you’ve ever read? “Man understands his chosen activities are meaningless in the scheme of the universe, continues to milk cows.”