In the Beginning . . .

We were musing the other day about the propensity of our business to dwell on anniversaries, and this led to speculation about when it might all have begun. We were tempted to invent an anniversary that hasn’t been celebrated this year. Perhaps, just perhaps, 1985 may mark the 100th anniversary of the first anniversary story to appear in any newspaper--an article in the old New York Blatt on April 15, 1885, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The invention of the anniversary story was a great day in the annals of American journalism, right up there with the trial of John Peter Zenger--which, incidentally, happened 250 years ago this year. Zenger established an important principle of freedom of the press, but without anniversary stories, newspapers would be a pale imitation of their present selves.

Oddly, only anniversaries ending in 0 or 5 have a chance of getting some ink. Anniversaries ending in any other number don’t count. This year contained the 40th anniversaries of V-E Day, the first test of an atomic bomb, the first use of the atomic bomb, and V-J Day, which followed swiftly after. No one marked the 39th anniversary of the first atomic tests on Bikini or the 14th anniversary of President Richard M. Nixon’s imposition of wage and price controls.

Unfortunately, no editor or reporter is still around who worked on the forerunner of all anniversary stories, so there’s no one to interview for first-hand accounts. Anyway, we agree with those who say that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.