The Tombstone Edition that Helped Galvanize American Independence

It’s known as the Tombstone Edition, a lightning-strike newspaper image that presages the American Revolution — and 261 years after it electrified readers in Colonial-era Philadelphia, a rare, fragile copy now rests at the Library. Pennsylvania Journal editor and printer William Bradford, livid at Britain’s imposition of the Stamp Act on the Colonies, laid out the front page of his Oct. 31, 1765, newspaper as if it were the paper’s grave marker, complete with a skull and crossbones set at the top in heavy black type.