• The first paper mill in North America was established near Philadelphia in 1690 by printer William Bradford and papermaker William Rittenhouse. Bradford (1663-1752) was arrested in 1692 for printing a leaflet critical of the Quaker government. He was tried in the first case in America that raised the issue of freedom of the press. His press was seized and he and a man who distributed the paper were briefly jailed. The trial resulted in no decision because of a split jury.

• Mario Andretti is the only racecar driver to win the Daytona 500 (1967), the Indianapolis 500 (1969) and the Formula One world title (1978). Mario was born in 1940 in Montona, Italy, just as Mussolini and Hitler were teaming up. After the hostilities ended, the Andretti's homeland become part of post-war Yugoslavia. They became refugees from Communism, spending several years in a camp at Tuscany. The Andretti family immigrated to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, in 1955.

• The National Road, which includes 90 miles of roadway through southwestern Pennsylvania once traveled by early settlers including George Washington and Daniel Boone, has been called "The Road that Built the Nation." Historic sites along the road illustrate America’s westward expansion. The National Road was created during the administration of President Thomas Jefferson to provide a route from the eastern seaboard into the central part of the country to open up the Midwest for settlement. It was the first Federally-funded interstate highway that ran from Baltimore, Maryland to Vandalia, Illinois. US 40 follows roughly the same path as the National Road.

• Camptown Races, by songwriter Stephen Foster who was born in Pittsburgh on July 4, 1826. was inspired by the five-mile horse race that ran between Wyalusing and Camptown. The "camptown" was a temporary workingmen's living arrangement along with a rag-tag mix of horses.

• The Pittsburgh Alleghenies played their first National League game in 1887. Baseball was thriving in the eleventh year of the National League. Batters got four strikes this year and were allowed to take first base when smacked by a ball. In New Orleans, manager Abner Powell offered "Ladies Days" to fans. Two years later, the Pittsburgh Alleghenies became the Pirates after "pirating" second baseman Louis Bierbauer away from the Philadelphia Athletics.

• Exposition Park in Pittsburgh was the National League’s host for four games of the first World Series in 1903. The Boston Americans walked off with an upset victory over the Pittsburgh Nationals in this inaugural baseball fall classic. The Bostonians captured the series, five games to three, scoring a 3-0 triumph in the eighth and final game. Players like Cy Young and Honus Wagner played, but Patrick Henry Dougherty was the standout for Boston, hitting two home runs in the second game. Fans for the first time realized that the American League was more than just a refuge for players who defected from the older circuit.

• The Rockville Bridge is the longest stone-arch railroad viaduct in the world. The bridge links Harrisburg with the west shore of the Susquehanna River. The first bridge at this location, later destroyed not by high water but by a tornado, opened on September 1, 1849, when the Pennsylvania Railroad began operating over it. The second bridge was an iron-truss and opened in 1877. The present 3,830 feet bridge, completed in 1902, has forty-eight 70-foot spans and is 52 feet wide.

• Washington Atlee Burpee, (1858-1915), founder of W. Atlee Burpee & Company, first opened a store in Philadelphia, selling poultry and corn as feed for poultry. He sold poultry into the 1940s from his catalog as well as seeds for vegetables. The family home, Fordhook Farm, Doylestown, specialized in testing onions, beets, carrots, peas and cabbage, and was an experimental farm as early as 1888 to produce seeds and to test and evaluate new varieties of vegetables and flowers.

• More than 2,000 traditional quilts, many made by area Mennonite women, are displayed at the Kutztown Folk Festival. Prize-winning quilts are auctioned at the end of the annual July event. Mark your calendars now for June 30 through July 8, 2007.

• Just 49 miles from Back Home in Benton, PA, about ten miles south of Towanda between Wysox and Wyalusing, is the Marie Antoinette Lookout. The French Asylum on the Susquehanna River overlooks a large expanse of land occupied by a community of French exiles during the French Revolution. Among the buildings, none of which survive, was a house purported to be for the French queen and her two children. Readers have an excellent opportunity to learn more of the French Queen by watching Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst who plays the queen who was engaged at the age of 14 to King Louis XVI to be the royal reproducer-in-chief.
--Marie Antoinette PG-13, 118 minutes Contains sexual content, partial nudity and innuendo.

• Specialty Bakers, is a small bakery headquartered in Marysville, with additional bakeries in Lititz and Dunkirk, New York. The company is known as "The Ladyfinger Specialist." Since 1901, the company has baked virtually all of the nation’s ladyfingers, small finger-shaped sponge cakes, as well as French Twirls (Crème Horns), Dessert Shells, Cake Rolls and Angel Food Cakes. Ladyfingers have been around an estimated nine hundred years from the House of Savoy in eleventh century France.

• Berwick is home to Berwick Offray, the largest manufacturer and distributor of decorative ribbons and bows in the world with over 1,000 employees. Berwick Offray is said to be the largest employer in Columbia County. C.M. Offray and Son, Inc. had been in business since 1876. In March, 2002, Berwick Industries LLC acquired the business assets of Offray. Locally known as the "ribbon factory," the company is a producer of truly beautiful ribbons. Ribbon factories in this country go back to 1815, and much earlier in Europe where ribbons represented nobility.