178: The New York Times is Published for the First Time


"Nytimes hq" by Haxorjoe - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nytimes_hq.jpg#/media/File:Nytimes_hq.jpg
The headquarters of the New York Times. (Photo by “Haxorjoe” via Wikimedia Commons)

On this date in 1851, the first issue of the New York Times was published.

Here are a few things you may not have known about “The Gray Lady.”

It was founded as the New-York Daily Times by politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and banker George Jones. The first issue sold for a penny. They dropped the word daily from the name in 1857. It gained status for a series of stories on New York’s Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall political machine. In 1896, the paper was purchased by Adolph Ochs, the owner for he Chattanooga Times in Tennessee. The paper has remained in the Ochs family ever since.

The paper is known for its distinctive design, using smaller headlines than most competitors and positioning the most important story at the top right of the front page. It was also one of the last papers to introduce the use of color photography on its front page. The first color photo on the front page appeared in 1997. The New York Times ran its first front-page display ad in 2009.

Our question, the New York Times has a circulation of 1,379,806 daily subscribers. What two American newspapers have higher circulations?

Today is World Water Monitoring Day, National Day in Chile and Navy Day in Croatia. In the United States, it is unofficially National Cheeseburger Day, National Tradesmen Day and National POW and MIA Recognition Day. It’s the birthday of writer Samuel Johnson, voice actress June Foray, cyclist Lance Armstrong and Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.

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