This episode of the “Yesterday’s Newsreel” — an early TV show that used footage from the defunct General News library — offers the viewer “television highlights of the news of yesteryear” by providing vintage clips of famous people and events from the first half of the 20th century. This episode opens with “The Japanese-Chinese War” of the 1930s (mark 00:32) and scenes of combat footage and a look of Japanese advancement including one on the Great Wall of China (mark 01:35) as well as Shanghai (mark 04:30). The narrator boasts China’s resilience, however, and as Chiang Kai-shek, leader of Republic of China, is shown at mark 05:00, we are told how “the ultimate fate of China remains a mystery.” Mark 05:15 takes the viewer to the Louvre in 1927 (mark 05:23) and a discussion of the painting’s 1911 theft, as well as the creation of multiple copies and whether Leonardo Da Vinci’s original resides in the museum. The personalities of 1924 are visited at mark 06:06 including author Arthur Conan Doyle and “the American Sherlock Holmes” William J. Burns during a visit to New York City, silent film cowboy William S. Hart, and Ethel Barrymore Colt (daughter of Ethel Barrymore). Come mark 07:30 the film looks at Sgt. Alvin York, one of the most decorated US Army soldiers during World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient, at home in Tennessee, and at mark 08:43 looks at 1926’s “Fashions of the Day.” A look at 1920’s aviation comes at mark 09:45 with a gigantic biplane inaugurating the Brussels to Paris route — possibly the first airline passenger service in the world — while mark 10:20 takes the viewer to 1926 and a look at Frank Morley, a Harvard University student who was a member of the British Oxford-Cambridge lacrosse team, and a University of Southern California football game versus the University of California.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com