Press + Publicity

Minerva was famous. For several decades, she was mentioned in newspapers around the world, thanks to her novelty and an apparent knack for marketing. During her busiest year of coverage (1890), she was mentioned on average every third day in some newspaper, somewhere.

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The map below represents all known mentions of Minerva in local newspapers between 1889 and 2022.* This does not include magazines or trade publications with general audience distribution on a national or international basis; those articles would add many more dots, if they could be pinned to any particular place on the map. Each dot represents one article (note: the same article was often published in dozens or scores of newspapers); zoom and click to see further details about each mention.

Some notable statistics of this coverage:

• Number of states: 44, plus the District of Columbia

• Number of countries: 8

• Busiest year: 1890 (255 articles)

• Busiest day: April 10, 1890 (11 articles published about her on a single day)

• Longest streak of coverage: 15 consecutive days (Aug 26 - Sep 9, 1890)

*These statistics are no doubt an undercount (and exclude coverage specific to the 2023 exhibit about Minerva). As additional historic newspapers are digitized/searchable, they will be updated; numbers last updated January 2024.