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NYTimes November 11, 1911
- telemachos 15y agoI don't understand the fascination with (merely) the number 11. Wouldn't NY Times November 11, 1918 be more appropriate today?[1] Or maybe Philip Larkin's MCMXIV.[2] [1] http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/world-war-i-ends http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/world-war-i-ends [2] http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/WWI/influence/MCMXIV.html http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/WWI/influence/MCMXIV.html
- suivix 15y agoToday will be 11/11/11 again. Just like in 1911.
- telemachos 15y agoRight. But what I meant by "I don't understand" was more along the lines of "So it's 11/11/11 again. Who cares? Oh, and by the way, every 11/11 is Veterans' Day..."
- jonnathanson 15y agoI don't think we need to read too deeply into the selection of the date. This is little more than a slice of trivia, the equivalent of saying "On this day, 100 years ago...". The choice of back-dated front page doesn't have any profound consequence, other than as a passing curiosity. I don't think the NYT is trying to make a statement with it.
- derleth 15y ago> every 11/11 is Veterans' Day Veterans Day has only been held on 11/11 every year from 1954-1971 and 1978 to today. This is older.
- telemachos 15y agoFirst, Veterans' Day, by that name, was only recognized after WWII, as you say, but 11/11 was a day of remembrance long before that under other names (Armistice Day or Remembrance Day).[1] Second, obviously a newspaper from 11/11/11 is earlier than a holiday on 11/11 precisely because the 11/11 dating comes from the end of World War I on November 11th, 1918 (on "the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month"). I'm sorry if my point wasn't clear, but my original comment refers to World War I, 1918 and a poem about the start of World War I. My original point remains: Today is (in many countries, not only the US) a national holiday in remembrance of the veterans of World War I or veterans more generally. I find it depressing that people care more about a piece of numerical trivia than that. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day
- ugh 15y ago“I find it depressing that people care more about a piece of numerical trivia than that.” You don’t know that. Unless you want everyone to care about nothing else whatsoever. Don’t always assume zero sum games.
- officemonkey 15y agoWell, not the one in 1911.
- thestoicjester 15y agoTomorrow will be 11/12/11 again. Just like in 1911.
- jobu 15y agoIf it makes you feel better, at least there isn't a front-page article about it in the NY times today like there was 100 years ago: http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1911/11/11/104881854/article-view http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1911/11/11/104881854...
- ugh 15y agoThat article is pure fluff. I can just imagine the editor saying to some reporter “Tomorrow is 11-11-11, now go and blow that up to a few dozen characters”.
- ry0ohki 15y agoFor some reason it makes me happy to see that it's not a new phenomenon to make such a big deal about something so pointless and manmade.
- funkah 15y agoThe first thing that struck me about this is how word-dense the page is compared to current newspapers.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoThat's definitely due to the cost of printing. The whole paper was only 20-25 pages back then too.
- wavephorm 15y agoNewspapers have a lot less than 25 pages of content these days, but a lot more ads.
- bgentry 15y agoInteresting that "Today" used to be spelled "To-day"
- seiji 15y agoAlso To-morrow.
- _delirium 15y agoAccording to the Corpus of Historical American English, 1911 was right in the middle of the transition from to-day to today, with to-day having 95% market share in 1890, 80% in 1900, 70% in 1910, 30% in 1920, 20% in 1930, and 5% in 1940: http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/?c=coha&q=12896286 http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/?c=coha&q=12896286 (Can't use Google n-grams on this one, because its punctuation-stripping makes it impossible to distinguish to-day from to day.)
- m4rkuskk 15y agoI wonder if she ever married the Baron.
- hugh3 15y agoI can't find any reference to a Baron Schlep having ever existed, leading me to suspect (along with the fact that he only had twelve dollars, and what sounds like a suspiciously made-up sort of name) that he may have been a fake Baron all along.
- _delirium 15y agoIf you compare the letter to both the 'l' and the 'i' in 'Ellis' on the line above, it looks like it might be an 'i'. The article can't decide whether it goes before or after the 'e' though, which means that if I'm right, it's either 'Schiep' or 'Scheip'. However, I can't find any info on anyone with those names either. Edit: the NY Times of November 12 has an update, confirming he was deported [pdf]: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F02E6DD1E31E233A25751C1A9679D946096D6CF http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F02E6DD1E... > Commissioner Williams said it was not because the man had only $12 in his possession, but because he was an undesirable alien. He was not a Baron, the Commissioner added.
- Samuel_Michon 15y agoTo further complicate matters: other newspapers covering the story back in the day spelled the man's name as "Adolph Schopf", "Adolph Schuep" and "Adolph Schüp". He's described as "a real German baron, a graduate of three German universities, one of which is the famous Heidelberg, the hero of five duels and the suitor of a beautiful young widow who has been making her home in Meriden during the past three months. His full name is Adolph Schopf, baron of Bottleburg, New Weissensee, province of Kieden Barden, Prussia."[1] [1] http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Cg9JAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kgINAAAAIBAJ&dq=olga%20stadia&pg=4576%2C4574644 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Cg9JAAAAIBAJ&sjid=k...
- 15y ago
- pan69 15y agoIn Thailand it's the year 2554. Just a bunch of numbers, who cares.
- bittermang 15y agoPage four features articles on both freight rates concerning interstate commerce[1] and debate over banks allowing customers to overdraft on their deposits[2]. In light of recent Internet tax/interstate commerce debates, and bank reform as it concerns overdraft fees, it really rings true that the more things change the more they stay the same. [1] http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1911/11/11/104881907/article-view http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1911/11/11/104881907... [2] http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1911/11/11/104881909/article-view http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1911/11/11/104881909...
- adestefan 15y agoJust look at the front page and realize all of the articles that are similar to things that are happening right now: Government spending - Army Costs in the Philippines Small celeb gosip - Some baron wanting to marry Lynch mob over a case about harming a child in PA
- jessedhillon 15y agoreCATPCHA supposedly uses scans of old NYT articles like this as the source image for some of their challenges. The idea is to harness crowd intelligence to digitize their archives. One half of the challenge is a word whose meaning is known and the other is one that still needs human intelligence to interpret. So it's a little sad then that, when you click through to the actual article, you get to read a blown up image.
- smackfu 15y agoI wonder about that since I invariably get one legible word in reCAPTCHA, and one junk word. Not just illegible or non-OCR-able, but actually nonsense strings of letters, e.g. "umower", "dealiff", "etstcom". My theory is that the source OCR is incorrectly breaking up words, so some words get split into multiple parts. And reCAPTCHA is useless for that.
- jessedhillon 15y agoThe way it works is that the one legible word is the control string, and the other one is the challenge string -- in cases like this it's obvious which is which, but not always. The challenge string could be comprised of characters from different scans, each of which had failed recognition by OCR software. The control word is there to prove that you're a human, and the challenge word is there for you to provide a small amount of work. In this case the work could benefit different scans at one time.
- _delirium 15y agoThe archive is full-text-searchable, though, so they must have something internally. Not sure if they just don't want to expose it, or if it's OCR with too many errors to be presentable to the public.
- DilipJ 15y agoamazing! I can just imagine someone reading this a hundred years ago, not knowing all that was to transpire over the coming century. Who knows what the world will be like in 2111?
- leoh 15y agoI thought the most fascinating thing was the strong and effective language regarding foreign affairs (i.e. the article about China): "The sun set upon a scene of fire, rapine, desolation, and butchery unrecorded in modern history", "Innocent Chinese are fleeing..." The language these days about these sorts of things are much more deferent, careful, more similar to the language used in articles about domestic affairs. Really shows the issue of globalism. Sounds like the article is in the context of the Xinhai revolution. Anyone know of any interesting details or articles about that?
- adestefan 15y agoIt's more about the need to paint a picture that the readers would never actually see with their eyes. Remember the people that read that article didn't see 10 reports on a television news show first.
- meric 15y agoHe's talking about the 1911 Chinese revolution[1], taking down the last dynasty of China and beginning of the Republic of China. All is not so bright however, a powerful general was made president because he was instrumental in the revolution; But his greed and death 5 years later leads to the Chinese army splitting among local warlords. It won't be until 1928 China is unified again[2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Expedition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Expedition
- nhebb 15y agoWhat caught my eye about that story was the transpacific communications, since the dateline was Nov. 10, 1911. Looking it up on Wikipedia, the first transpacific cables were laid in 1902 (transatlantic in 1986), so getting a cable from Nanking was still a recent development. I know 1911 wasn't the stone age, but I have a healthy respect for what they were able to accomplish with the technology they had at the time.
- adminonymous 15y ago"ST. LOUIS, Mo., Nov. 10. -- Mrs. Eugene Batten, whose first husband, David Rothschild, died in Sing Sing Prison, where he was sent for wrecking the Federal Bank of New York and the Globe Securities Company, to-day told where was to be found $422,000 in currency which her husband secreted just before his two institutions were closed. " Ah, the good old days, when bankers were sent to Sing Sing for their crimes, and their wives even returned the money. Hey, at least something has changed in 100 years.
- eCa 15y agoAlso, in those days reporters weren't payed by the sentence...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- andrewfelix 15y agoIt looks like The Verge website today (http://www.theverge.com/ http://www.theverge.com/).
- Achshar 15y agoam i the only one who is getting.. TimesMachine is available only to home delivery subscribers. Contact your library for complimentary access to the complete archive of The New York Times offered by ProQuest.
- decadentcactus 15y agoI get it too. I'm in Australia if that's why it hates me
- aw3c2 15y agoNope, me too. Germany.
- Causification 15y agoAmerican here. I get it too. In fact I get a login page on every single NY Times article that gets posted on HN. Seeing that five times a day when I expect to be seeing an interesting article is making me loathe the New York Times.