Add to the list of American firsts the came out of Boston the first continuously published newsletter. The early Boston settlers were still British at heart, even if separated from their birth land by an ocean, and wanted to keep up on all the latest news from London. John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster of Boston, obliged.

On this day, April 24, in 1704 Campbell published the first issue of the Boston News-Letter. A small single sheet (then called a half-sheet), printed on both sides, the weekly News-Letter was the first continuously published newspaper in America.

Like many of the other news publications of the day, the Boston paper relied on reprinting and excerpting articles from its British counterparts. The first issue reprinted December articles (which demonstrates how slow news traveled at the time) from the London Flying Post and London Gazette about the French threats to the UK. The small column of local news dryly retold routine maritime actions and a told of an “excellent sermon” conducted by one Rev. Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton of Boston’s Old South Church.