Looks like "black bar" instances go back to at least 2009 which is fairly close to the beginning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=644954 https://news.ycom

Looks like "black bar" instances go back to at least 2009 which is fairly close to the beginning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=644954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=644954 FWIW, one thing you might consider doing if you ever want to do more work on your script, is search for "black bar" in the search index. Two very common patterns we see are people asking "why is there a black bar" as a submission, and/or comments asking "can we get the black bar for <person>?" on the main story about a death. Of course the "can we get the black bar" thing is occasionally asked without the black bar actually being done, so it's not a perfect signal but it might help somewhat.