On the back of the card, the transcript reads "Have you heard the news? If not, take a step outside and pick up one of Chicago's beloved hometown journals. Situated at every busy corner, they'll bring you up to speed on current events, hot new restaurants, touring musicians passing through the town, and that juicy neighbourhood gossip! Print lives on these iconic outposts!"

Leppävirta is a municipality of 9000 people. The card shows, I think, an illustration from a children's book. The caption on the back reads "Osmo Omppu Omenamäki - Hero of the Seas. 

Liptovský Hrádok was named after the nearby castle. The castle was built for use of the forestry commission, hunters of the area, and for the Catholic Church. It was later modified and furnished in the style of Louis XVI. In 1728 the area became known for salt processing.  Today there are almost 7000 who call Liptovský Hrádok home. 

This is a great card from Gilbert, Arizona ! My first thought when I saw the name was that Gilbert must be a small, possibly declining town of a few hundred people. Since it’s in Arizona, I imagined it might have been a mining community that began to fade after the mine closed. However, Gilbert is actually a suburb of Phoenix and has a population of nearly 300,000. The last time the town had only a few hundred residents was around the 1940 census. In the 1980s, Gilbert experienced a population boom. Between 1980 and 1990, the population grew from 5,717 to nearly 30,000. By 2000, it had reached almost 110,000—an increase of more than 400% in just a decade. There was no mine. William Gilbert , the town’s namesake, provided land to the Arizona Eastern Railway in 1902 to build a line between Phoenix and Florence. Settlers, including members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , moved into the area, including some who had left Mexico during unrest associated with Pancho Vil...

This is a reproduction of the Phoebe Snow advertising campaign for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (1900–1917). Phoebe Snow was a fictional character created by Earnest Elmo Calkins to promote the railroad. She was one of the first advertising characters based on a live model. Rail travel around 1900 was tough on passengers’ clothing. After a long trip on a train hauled by a bituminous coal-fired steam locomotive, travelers would often disembark covered in black soot. This was usually not the case when the locomotive burned anthracite, a cleaner-burning type of coal. The Lackawanna owned vast anthracite mines in Pennsylvania and, up until World War I , used anthracite in its passenger locomotives. As a result, the railroad could legitimately claim that passengers’ clothing would remain clean after a long journey. To promote this, Phoebe Snow was described as a “young New York socialite” and a frequent passenger on the Lackawanna. She was always depicted wearing a whit...

The New Yorker is famous for its cover art, and there is a postcard series dedicated to it. I’ve received many of these during my time with Postcrossing . I initially thought this one was from February, but it was actually published in late August 1997. I’m not sure whether the arrow is meant to be an erotic symbol—or if that’s just the kind of question the image is meant to leave you with.