Together over the past 12 months we have shared a journey of 125 years. The origins of this newspaper were planted in 1883 – and since January, writers at The News Tribune have celebrated this anniversary with a chronicle of weekly snapshots on the South Sound cover.

It’s easy enough to remember but perhaps hard to imagine how we celebrated the coming of Christmas 50 years ago. There was news in The News Tribune that week of a rocket into space, a commie on our doorstep, Elvis in Germany – but much more than that, for a child of the day, there was a trip downtown.

Tacomans seeking amusement on a drizzly December day in 1898 consulted The Daily Ledger, where ads promoted the play “House of Bondage” at the Tacoma Theatre and vaudeville at the Star, the Grand and the Pantages.

Dec. 7, 1941– the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – occurred as the Sunday front page of the News Tribune/Tacoma Ledger featured news of “Tacoma’s biggest grid game.”

Finding a job in 1934 was nearly impossible for the 17 million people who were unemployed at the height of the Great Depression.

Bribes, bootleggers, gambling dens, police payoffs, pot parties and perfumed ladies of the evening – all were on the menu in Tacoma during the last week of November 1951.

Mrs. J.E. Colyar smiled in her booking photo, which appeared on the front page of The Tacoma Times in September 1942.

“HUNS STOP FIGHTING, GIVE UP NAVY AND RHINE TO THE ALLIES”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains offensive language – generally accepted at the time – from an 1885 newspaper account. We’re including it to give readers an honest account of the period. Not all of the editorial stances taken by The News Tribune and its forebears over the years can be looked back at with pride.

In October 1968, Tacoma only had eyes for Kaye.

The Tacoma Hotel, once the finest crib north of San Francisco, left the world the way it thrived for half a century: in a blaze of glory.

When the Spanish flu epidemic struck Tacoma in October 1918, the city was a bustling boomtown near a thriving military post during World War I.

North Korean captors severely beat a former Pierce County resident and his USS Pueblo crew mates 40 years ago in retaliation for a famous photograph that first appeared on the front page of The News Tribune.

When President John F. Kennedy arrived at Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium on Sept. 27, 1963, a 14-year-old named John waited with his camera ready.

“Interurban open at last” reads the headline on a full-page story inside Tacoma’s Daily Ledger.

There was lots of news in The Tacoma Daily News of Saturday, Sept. 14, 1907. Four stories merited equal presentation at the top of Page 1:

In 1911 Tacoma, Bon Ton corsets were on sale for $2.69 (marked down from $5.60), women’s hats were huge and feathered, and only one student in 15 graduated from high school.

The front-page story that greeted Tacoma News Tribune readers on Aug. 31, 1945, must have gladdened their war-weary hearts.

Monday, Aug. 21, 1961, was a giant occasion in Tacoma baseball history.

The headline on the front page of the Aug. 18, 1920, Tacoma News Tribune proclaimed: “SUFFRAGE PASSES.”

It was the week we tried to go to the moon and it was the week Miss Thriftway went to the bottom of Lake Washington.

Like any racer, Eddie Rickenbacker was driven by the numbers.

E.B. Quackenbush, a Spokane attorney and grand dragon of the state chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, welcomed 200 delegates to the annual convention in Bellingham. Cherry and pear trees in Jefferson County were beset by slugs. President Hoover bemoaned “talkie” moving pictures because, he said, “They demand too close attention.”

Tacoma’s Soap Box Derby became a late-July tradition from 1936 to 1973. It drew thousands of spectators and crowned two national champions before a scandal shut it down. A crowd of 6,000 packed the sidewalks along Yakima Avenue on July 18, 1936, to see 14-year-old Ellsworth Staley win Tacoma’s first Soap Box Derby.

Among the front page stories in mid-July 1945 – a month before the end of World War II – was one on Lt. Arnold Samuelson, a Tacoman home on leave from the fighting in Europe.

The musicians’ union played patriotic songs. The Eagles’ drill team drilled. Tacoma’s fireboat spewed forth cascades of water along Commencement Bay, and fireworks bearing the theme “The Birth of the Glorious Fourth” lit the night sky with gunpowder rainbows.

Long before there was Freedom Fair, Tacomans celebrated the Fourth of July holiday by flocking to the Tacoma Motor Speedway to watch the likes of World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker and car designer and racer Louis Chevrolet.

The events of June 22-28, as reported in the pages of The News Tribune 61 years ago, read like déj vu for the very first time:

For years, U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had been railing against communist traitors he insisted were everywhere, plotting to undermine the U.S. government.

If you were looking for a big name to help celebrate a significant community event and it’s 1954, then Ed Sullivan was your man.