The Detroit Free Press published its first edition before Michigan entered statehood and when wild animals outnumbered the people living in the city. Its editor assigned a writer to walk the waterfront and record the shipping news each day, creating the first news beat. The Free Press also was the first U.S. newspaper to print a regular Sunday edition and the first to publish court testimony. It sent reporters to Civil War battlefields to describe the action, set up a Washington bureau to report on politics, and was the first American newspaper published in Europe when it began a London edition in 1881.