The dodgy arithmetic of one employee at the New York Times resulted in inaccurate issues numbers on the front page of every newspaper for over 100 years.
It seems that back in 1898 someone added one to 14,499 and got 15,000, with the huge jump in issues not being noticed until 2000.
How exactly the mistake was made isn't clear, but how it was spotted was cleared up in the mother of all correction notes published in the Times on the first day of the new millennium, and rediscovered by The Atlantic this week .... http://www.independent.co.uk
