Newspapers across the United States sold out quickly on Wednesday, as people everywhere snatched up copies reporting on Tuesday night's historic victory for Barack Obama.

In Chicago, the site of Obama's presidential election-night rally, copies of the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune and its free daily the RedEye were gone by the time the last waves of commuters stepped onto trains and buses in the morning. Even home-delivered copies, sometimes still waiting at front doors when workers returned home in the evening, were snatched up and brought inside not long after delivery.

Everyone, it seems, wanted a souvenir capturing the moment, and nothing does it better than a newspaper.

Gawker reported people lining up outside The New York Times building in Manhattan, the line stretching down the block. A man working at a newsstand in New York told the Financial Times he had sold out of The New York Times by 9 a.m., and the New York Post by 11 a.m., adding that neither paper “rarely sells out.”

Other newspapers across the country, such as the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.), The Cincinnati Enquirer (Ohio) and many others are printing extra copies. Some will be distributed throughout cities as they come off the presses, others will be available to order online and still others will be bundled in Thursday's paper.