Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 90, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1907 — FREAK EUROPEAN PAPERS. [ARTICLE]

FREAK EUROPEAN PAPERS.

Plans to Win Readers Failed to Prolong Their Lives. A French magazine writer who has been looking into the subject of freak newspapers thinks that one of the most remarkable of these was the Laminaria, published in Madrid. The ink with which it was printed contain ed a small percentage of phosphorous, so that the letters were visible and the paper could be read in the dark. Next after this he finds remarkable the case of the Regal, printed with an ink guaranteed nonpoisonous on thin sheets of dough. After absorbing all the information the sheet contained one could eat it, thus deriving from it nourishment for mind and body. The publisher of a new Parisian journal, Le Bien ’Etre, promised to all subscribers for 40 consecutive years a pension and free burial. In spite of the inducement subscribers were so few that the paper died in a month. It was followed shortly after by a paper called Le Mouchoir, the handkerchief. It was printed on paper such as the so-called Japanese napkins are made of and might be used in case the reader forgot or lost his handkerchief. It did not last long. At two different French seacoast resorts newspapers called the Courier des Baigneurs (Bathers’ Courier) and La Naiade, which doesn’t need trans lation, were printed on watefproof paper. The inducement was that the bather could take his paper into the sea with him and read it while he en joyed his bath. The climax of utility seems to be reached in Norway, where some ot the newspapers used so tough a quali ty of paper that it can be cut into strips and twisted into serviceable rope when the news is all read.