Answer: The Observer

Today, it’s tough to imagine a world without a Sunday edition of the paper. The arrival of the thick edition of the paper with a wide range of news, Sunday comics, sales circulars, and, come the holidays, giant glossy Christmas toy advertisements, has been a staple experience for people throughout most of the 20th century and into the present.

Yet once upon a time, the idea of a Sunday paper was entirely unheard of. Papers published the news during the week, large papers might have a Saturday edition, and nobody published on Sundays. Nobody, that is, until W.S. Bourne launched The Observer in December of 1791. Not only was The Observer the very first Sunday edition paper ever printed, it remains the longest running Sunday newspaper since it has been in continual print since its launch date over two centuries ago.

While other newspapers later followed suit, Britain, to this day, maintains a curious distinction with its newspapers. In the United States and many other countries, the Sunday editions of newspapers are simply prepared by the same companies that prepare the daily or weekly papers (the Sunday edition of the New York Times is simply an extra “weekly” edition of the regular Times, for example), but in Britain, there is a long running tradition of Sunday papers being prepared by totally separate companies. The Observer, for example, has existed solely as a Sunday paper all these centuries.