164. Today in 1920s Turkey: 3 August 1925 (Dog Working a Newspaper Stand)

(Photograph and snippet, Haftalık Mecmua or “The Weekly Digest,” 3 August 1925, no. 3, page 8.)

Türkçe
Gazete Bayii Köpek!
Köpeklerin, insanlardan sonra en zeki mahluk olduğunu iddia ederler. Bu iddiaya, maymunu da ithal etmek şartıyla inanmamak mümkün değildir. Bu hususta birçok misaller göstermek kabildir. Bu meyanda Roma’da bir köpek gazete bayiiliğini meslek ittihaz etmiştir. Bu köpeğe bir gazete ismini söyleyince köpek derhal matlup gazeteyi diğerlerinden ayırarak müşteriye uzatmaktadır.

English
Newsstand Dog!
They claim that dogs are the smartest creatures after humans. With the exception of monkeys, it would be impossible not be believe this claim. It is possible to show many examples on this matter. Here, a dog in Rome has taken on a job as a newsstand attendant. When this dog is told the name of a newspaper, he will immediately separate the desired paper from the others and hand it to the customer.

Comments:
Not unlike today’s click-bait culture, papers of the 1920s often included sensational and half-true stories about curiosities from around the world. The non-local subject of this snippet, a dog in Rome, suggests the story was lifted from a European publication and revived in this Istanbul-based paper. In fact, it is also possible that whatever original story accompanied this photograph may have been modified to make it more interesting to this new audience. After all, many of these papers were in the business of informing but also entertaining their readers. And a story about a working-class dog is entertaining, indeed.

Today in 1920s Turkey has covered a handful of similar stories that require the reader to suspend disbelief—betraying my own interest in “entertaining” readers. Several of them can be accessed through the below links:

158. Mechanized Man, aka Proto-Android

149. Vitamin Cigars for Healthy Children

101. “Pants Trend” May Be Spreading To Women

88. Flying to the Moon in a Zeppelin

60. Cat and Mouse Get Along Like Siblings

(Photograph and snippet, Haftalık Mecmua or “The Weekly Digest,” 3 August 1925, no. 3, page 8.)