[QUOTE=Chez Guevara]
Did the first Straight Dope newspaper column carry the taglines Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 and/or It’s taking longer than we thought?
Personally I think it’s unlikely, and if I’m right I’d like to know when these phrases were incorporated into the column banner.
[/QUOTE]
As near as I can recall, I wrote this slogan for the T-shirts we started selling when the Straight Dope began appearing on America Online in 1995. Matt Jetmore, who ran a separate Straight Dope website at the time with our permission, picked it up at some point for the home page we took over when AOL kicked us out around 1999. It’s one of only two things I have ever written that Cecil has liked, the other being Perfect Master, his user title on the SDMB.