Is this the oldest newspaper correction of all time?

12 Years a Slave, and 161 years before they spell your name right.

Now, how's this for admitting your mistakes?

Like most newspapers, the New York Times runs a corrections column, in which it holds up its hands when it gets things wrong. Usually, they're pretty tame, amending someone's age or address. But this is a doozy.

Yep, that's January 20, 1853. As in, 161 years ago.

In fairness, they still wanted to issue a correction for the sake of accuracy. And while we were a little sceptical, it's genuinely right there on the NYT website.

---

From Josh Greenman. If you like this kind of stuff, you should browse through Poynter's Regret the Error blog, which happily points out all the woopsie-daises of the journalism world.