Major Events Mentions in US Newspapers by Decade

The number of mentions in all US newspapers of major events. The counts were normalized by percentage with the maximum set to 100 for each event. As one would expect, and in stark contrast to the "Holocaust" event, each event peaked sharply in the decade in which they occurred. (The 2020s have been prorated to ten years at the current rate as of March 10, 2025.)

This chart shows shows a sharp spike in newspaper mentions of an event, unsurprisingly, in the decade in which it occurs. The events searched are "atomic bomb", "twin towers", "Pearl Harbor", "moon landing."
In the 1980s, the Houston Rockets fielded Ralph Sampson and Hakeem Olajuwon, who were known as the "Twin Towers," accounting for many mentions in that decade. Also, "moon landing" mentions prior to 1960s may be puzzling, but there is a place on a river called "Moon Landing" that is regularly reported for river water levels.
Chart: Craig Nelsen / craignelsen.substack.comSource: newspapers.comGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper