Rick Deemie, age 10, of Peoria, Ill., for his question:

When was the first newspaper published in America?

Several brave Americans tried to start newspapers in Colonial days. The first one was started in 1690 by Benjamin Harris of Boston. It was called Publick Occurances Both Forreign and Domestick and it was planned to appear once each month. However, the first issue stirred up so much trouble that no more were published. When the war with England began, the colonists were publishing 35 newspapers. But none of them were dailies.

The first daily newspaper was started in 1783, which was after the colonies became the United States of America. It was published in Philadelphia and called the Pennsylvania Evening Post and Daily Advertiser. Soon every state and then every city was publishing its own newspaper. Nowadays, more than 1700 daily newspapers are published in the U.S.  plus another 8000 or so that appear once or twice a week.