Historical Tweets: Twitter posts from way back

by Todd Ritter Jan 6th 2009

Historicaltweets.com takes us on a journey through time to see Twitter posts from historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Michael Jordan. There are categories for 1800's, various decades of the 1900's, and even Comically Old when the word "Twitter" would have fit nicely in iambic pentameter.

You can submit your own ideas, choose to view a random tweet, and will soon be able to buy merchandise which I'm sure will be decorated with popular historical tweets. This site has earned a distinguished spot in my feed reader so that I'm able to keep up with the tweets I missed from back in the day.

Tags: history, tweets, twitter

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Adae said 6:10PM on 1-06-2009

You don't use apostrophes to make things plural! With the exception of lowercase single letters. Is there no editor here?

Todd Ritter said 8:16PM on 1-06-2009

Yes we have editors, and I think you'll find there is no perfect answer when it comes to pluralizing years like I did. For instance, I found multiple grammar articles for both sides of the argument:

Plural numbers, letters, and abbreviations also take apostrophes, as in Ph.D.'s, p's and q's, and 1800's, but this usage is becoming less frequent. Many people now simply write 1800s or CODs, and that's considered fine.

Ref: http://www.johntcullen.com/sharpwriter/content/apostrophe.htm

(This is not meant to start a grammar debate!)

Adae said 9:20PM on 1-06-2009

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I was just going off of what I had learned since I was a child and what the Purdue Owl states.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_apost.html

I did not know that apostrophes were so liberally used originally and I appreciate the link.

DeoWulf said 10:10PM on 1-06-2009

Bandwidth limit exceeded D:

Twitter Historian said 12:51AM on 1-07-2009

bandwidth fixed! enjoy our 100's of Historical Tweets!!!! :)

Twitter Historian said 1:48AM on 1-07-2009

Forgot to mention: what historical figures do you (or your readers) want to see tweets from?

Thanks for the post!

-- the historian

linda rowe said 4:05PM on 2-20-2009

I am a high school English teacher and I would like my seniors to create twitters for our British LIt curriculum.

How do we do it and can we share them with you for possible posting???

Thanks!

Linda

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