Damn it! It was flavor-aid. Get it right! 
I thought American Indian battles were always used as historical frames of reference, especially concerning European events.
Must not have been any good Indian massacres that year.
You’re right. That could have been any number of years.
Well, I provided reasons why I think it was appropriate. I’m being disingenuous how exactly? I really think Reuters is anti-American, and maybe work for them so I have to lie and try to keep them in business?
Open your mind and at least consider the possibility people genuinely disagree with you.
Alright then, when was the Holland Tunnel built?
And it seems like the Van Wyck Expressway has been around for a long long time.
How about the first Dutch treat? :dubious:
I was exaggerating… But I am just somewhat surprised that people find the Sioux massacre a good historical reference point. Honestly, I don’t even think I was taught about the Battle of Wounded Knee in grammar school or high school and would have no way to place it historically.
For godsake people.
[Monty Python] I’m not dead yet! [/Monty Python]
That story was about the poor woman celebrating her birthday, not her obituary. Just because she’s so old she can remember cowboys and Indians doesn’t mean we should shovel the dirt on before her time.
Anyway, I’d say the writer did the same thing people here did…googled 1890 and decided that was the event that said “really really old” the best. Maybe it was a little clumsy but not bashing.
I wouldn’t have been able to place it either, but it would have got the “DAMN! A friggin’ Indian massacre? That was a long-ass time ago, that bitch is OLD!” reaction, which is what I believe the author was going for.
Allow me to be the first to:
:smack:
Whoops! She’s not dead, huh? I would still argue that for most people a milestone like the telegraph or a certain president’s term of office would provide a better historical reference point.
I guess. Shrug I guess I’m a bit cynical and just assumed Indian massacres extended more recently than that.
I couldn’t bring up the original link, so please excuse my morbid assumptions as well.
So, is she a smoker? What does she eat for breakfast? Does she think Tom Cruise is a dork?
The point is to show by example how the world has changed since the persons birth. None of the other events for that year do so in such an evocative way.
I guess Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper was a Sioux indian who escaped Wounded Knee. 
I have no idea when Benjamin Harrison was in office or when the telegraph was invented, though I’ll grant you it’s a good marker, too, since I know it was invented prior to the telephone, and was a newfangled thing in the Old West.
Give ya a hint … the Americans were on horseback cavalry. The Sioux were still in armed conflict with the US. on the Great Plains. No TVs, no radios, no phones, no electricity except maybe back in the East.
Were you thinking the massacre was conducted by strafing runs from Blackhawk helicopters?
Oh gosh! I hope you are kidding…
No, Schipper was Belgian. That’s what inspired Custer’s famous last words at the Batlle of the Little Big Horn, when he leaned over to his lieutenant (the only survivor) and said, “Tell me again why a Belgian girl would make such a great scout for this area?”
See, all that, for me, conveys a better sense of the times.
[nitpick mode]
The electrical telegraph was invented in 1837, slightly before Benjamin Harrison and Ms. van Andel-Schipper.