This comes from The Writer's Almanac today.
It was on this day in 1851 that The New York Times published its first issue. It was founded by George Jones, a banker, and Henry Jarvis Raymond, who was a politician and then worked for the New York Tribune before he got fired. Raymond was so bitter about being fired that he hoped to make a newspaper that was successful enough to drive the Tribune out of business. They set up their office in a decrepit brownstone, and they didn't have lamps yet so they had to put the paper together by candlelight. But the windows didn't have glass yet, so the candles kept blowing out. The paper reached a circulation of 10,000 within 10 days. The first issue proclaimed, "We publish today the first issue of the New-York Daily Times, and we intend to issue it every morning (Sundays excepted) for an indefinite number of years to come." It's now been in print for 157 years.
