Cecil’s Adam’s debut missive (archive.org link) to the teeming masses appeared on this day 45 years ago, on February 2, 1973.
The traditional 45th anniversary standard promoted by marketing mavens is sapphire. Unca Cece would want something practical, so I’m going to suggest a sapphire record player needle as the perfect, thoughtful, gift.
I’m still waiting for my LP.
Amazing 45 years. Of course, in some respects, the Unca Cece of old was just a fore-runner of fashion; he was that generation’s Princess Google. 
That date was also a Friday. (I can calculate day-of-week within seconds, and have done so on stage. I’ll cover this in a MMP thread soon.)
45 years often works out to be an exact number of weeks, and it does in this case. 2348 weeks to be exact.
52 weeks from now will make… {an exercise for the tms!}
Happy ‘A’ day, Unca Cece! My sapphire encrusted cork screw is in the mail. Enjoy!
There was Internet 45 years ago, or did the site start in another way and morph to an online message board?
Map of the internet in 1973.
Thanks! 
The origin was The Chicago Reader, an early alternative Newspaper in Chicago, started in 1971. Cecil’s column started in 1973.
That’s some amazing history.
Chase Sapphire card?
I’ll have a Bombay Sapphire martini in honor of the Dope’s milestone.
Before Cecil started up in '73, we hand a number of free papers in Albuquerque patterned after various San Francisco free rags around the UNM area. Maybe some of the same people ran them. I graduated in '72, well before Cecil. Yet one of the papers had a Straight Dope column. I believe, but could be wrong, that it was in a specific paper called The Seer’s Catalogue, with an R Crumb (like) cover and a Mr Natural type character going, Oh, I get it. Anyway, this old Straight Dope column was actually about dope. They had some chem students from UNM testing samples of local street drugs circulating and listing what was good or dangerous in any given week. They were probably using the University lab to do it.