Headlines Of the Times Game

by R. Glass and M. Spiegelman

You are a  student in the year 4000.3.14 when all key historical events of the 20th century have been forgotten.  An extraterrestrial race has come to earth and offered us a seat in the League Of Galactic Interplanetary Citizens (LOGIC) provided mankind is worthy.  Unfortunately, the Sentient Exhibition Test  (SET) involves key 20th century historical events.  The SET requires validation and citations of the events from a newspaper of the time period.  Our only link to the 20th century is an Internet link to the past. 

Unfortunately, the only scholar working on this project up and left the planet leaving behind a series of cryptic clues of major events for the SET.  You have been appointed to a team of historical detectives because of your skills in Boolean logic and research.    You can use any resource you wish to decipher the clues or determine the event but ultimately, you must find that frontpage story and citation in the Historical New York Times database.  You must also find  and cite a funny, interesting or surprising advertisement from that same issue of the paper.  No pressure but the penalty for not being accepted to LOGIC is 100% vaporization of the planet and its inhabitants. 

Submission requirements:

Part 1:

You task, and you have to accept it if you want a grade and not be vaporized is to place on your team wiki page:

1. The headline.
2. Cut and pasted MLA version of the citation of story you found.  Be sure to insert the correct information about the NCC library in the areas indicated.
3. The initial search you used in the NY Times to locate the story.  You must report any filtering choices (such as Date Range) in your search.  
4. Write a search containing only literal strings, ANDs, ORs and NOTs (no adjacent words) that will cause the article to appear first in the search string.  As in the previous part, report any filtering settings you used.
5. Remember, if your superiors repeat the above search with your settings it must show as number 1 in the results list. Be sure to double check your results
6. Cut and paste the citation of the advertisement.  Also provide one or two sentences about this advertisement as you why you picked it.  Was it funny?  Surprising? Interesting, etc?

Part 2:

Review the advertisements of all other teams.  Using the comment feature on the Wiki, vote for the

• Funniest ad found and why.
• Most interesting ad found and why.

Part 3:

Prize Winners: (TBA)