The Writing Office

Here is some trivia for all you writer’s out there.  Did you know that today, October 29th, is the anniversary of the first ballpoint pen sale in America?

October 29, 1945 the first ballpoint pens went on sale at Gimbels department store in New York City.  Their cost? An easily affordable $12.50 each, well… maybe not so easy when you consider that would be roughly $130 today.

And, my mom says that although they were *the* thing to get, the things leaked horribly.

Yep, that’s right, today marks the 156th year of the New York Times, originally the New-York Daily Times.

Journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones formed the New York Times on September 18, 1851 as the New-York Daily Times, a name that was later changed to the New York Times.

One of my favorite SNAFUs for the New York Times is concerning space and can be found at Wikipedia:

On January 13, 1920, a New York Times editorial on page 12 entitled “A Severe Strain on Credulity” ridiculed Robert Goddard and his claim that a rocket would work in space:

That Professor Goddard, with his “chair” in Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.

On July 17, 1969, days before Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, the newspaper published on page 43 a tongue-in-cheek correction:

Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.

Happy Birthday New York Times!