I always read the Corrections, for gems like this:
Personally, I’d much rather see a show called “Old Mistress Mind.”
There is something funny about a correction of a spelling error in the obituary of someone named Mr. Spelling.
I wonder if Tori is taking notes. 
Best ever correction from the NYT:
“An article on Nov. 10 about animal rights referred erroneously to an island in the Indian Ocean and to events there involving goats and endangered giant sea sparrows that could possibly lead to the killing of goats by environmental groups. Wrightson Island does not exist; both the island and the events are hypothetical figments from a book (also mentioned in the article), ‘‘Beginning Again,’’ by David Ehrenfeld. No giant sea sparrow is known to be endangered by the eating habits of goats.”
I can’t find a cite for this but I swear it’s true.
Sometime in the 1960’s, the last Nizam of Hyderabad (Mir Osman Ali Khan) became very ill. His condition deteriorated and, sadly but inevitably, The (London) Times eventually ran a story headlined:
Nizam of Hyderabad is Dead.
Somewhat less inevitably, the same paper ran another story the very next day headlined:
Nizam of Hyderabad Slightly Better.
On January 13, 1920, a New York Times editorial stated that pioneer rocket scientist Robert Goddard " … does not know the relation of action and reaction and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react…"
Working in a timely fashion to correct their mistake :rolleyes: they issued an apology to Mr Goddard on July 17, 1969 - the date of the historic liftoff of Neil Armstrong’s lunar landing. (and this was 24 years after Professor Goddard’s death).
That’s nothing. The Vatican didn’t get around to admitting Galileo was right until 1992.
From today’s edition of The (London) Times:
The Image of the Week on page 5 of The Knowledge today, purporting to show the artists Gilbert and George looking uncannily like Morecambe and Wise, is in fact of Morecambe and Wise. We apologise for the error.
Actually they had admitted the facts were right later in the 1700s. They just didn’t want to give GG the satisfaction of a personal apology since he had been such a pest about it
Well actually, by 1820 doubts about the correctness of the Church’s position on the Copernican Theory were pretty strong within the church and by the late 1800’s teaching of the theory was authorized. The 1992 thing was, I believe,the apology of the Vatican to Gallileo for its treatment of him.
That’s excellent.
I used my Lexis/Nexis account to find the correction, and also the original article. Here are the paragraphs to which the correction refers:
The author of the article could benefit from reading his sources more closely.
There was another good one in the Times a couple of weeks ago. This was for a recipe in a cooking feature. They had confused a teaspoon of mustard for a tablespoon of the stuff.
Those of you who enjoy corrections will love Regret The Error. One of my favorites, from the Deseret Morning News:
"Will you look at yesterday’s edition? You’re responsible for this ad. ‘This week, only, at Jiffy Car Wash, for $3 have your car cleaned, polished, and sodomized.’ "
“Wow, I wouldn’t take my car there. Not even for $2.”
“We had to run a correction, Ridgely… in today’s paper…”
“Well, as long as it’s all cleared up.”
“Well, you set the type! Here, look at it.”
" ‘We apologize to Jiffy Car Wash for any embarrassment; we hope it will happen again.’ "
- Royal Canadian Air Farce
Crap, now I’m going to have to read them too, and not wait for them to show up as newsbreaks in the New Yorker.
Thanks a lot.
Ohh. What a wonderful page. I liked this one from the Sun:
And I like this from The Guardian:
And that the hell’s up with the New Yorker? You used to get a good dozen of those things per issue; now it’s maybe one every two weeks! Bastards.