A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 1107

In one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Picard is working on Fermat’s Last Theorem. After the airing of that episode, it was proven (it needed a patch, but after that, held).
Also, the mention of horses in North America in the Book of Mormon -- before any had been introduced. I always found that funny.
-Dr. John M. Styers, Owatonna, Minnesota (yakuzalord69 gmail.com)

In the recent blockbuster movie Oppenheimer, I noticed that some of the American flags waved at the celebration party featured 50 stars, but at the time there were only 48. I still have a pre-Hawaii/Alaska flag inherited from my great aunt, which I fly anachronistically each Jul 4.
-Marco Davis, Orem, Utah (davis.marco gmail.com)

In the 1968 film, The Devil’s Brigade, the Canadian troops march into Fort Harrison near Helena, Montana in 1942 with a maple leaf flag flying proudly. It was not adopted as the Canadian flag until 1965.
-Bob Gordon, Brantford, Canada (bob34g gmail.com)

When I viewed a rerun of Blade Runner a few years ago, it was noticeable that no one was using cell phones. Not 2019 at all.
-Georgiana Hanselmann, Zurich, Switzerland (georgiana.ha bluewin.ch)

According to IMDb in the movie Spartacus, there is a scene where the slave Antoninus (played by Tony Curtis) is seen wearing a Rolex watch. In watching out for movie anachronisms, they should have had him wearing a wrist sundial instead!
-David Mezzera, Vallejo, California (damezz comcast.net)

Anachronism: A costumed man in St Petersburg checking his cellphone

St. Petersburg, Russia, 2017

Photo: Joanne Gilmore

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My husband and I visited St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2017. As we wandered the grounds, I saw a costumed gentleman scrolling on his phone. I loved the anachronistic quality of it and quickly snapped a couple of photos.
-Joanne Gilmore, Upper Sandusky, Ohio (gilmjo email.com)

My favourite, which many people would not notice, is in numerous TV films set in the 1920s and 1930s (Agatha Christie crime stories are frequent examples). The producers go to great lengths to make everything look and sound right for the period, but then in the background we hear a cooing collared dove. The species was totally unknown in this country until the first pair arrived in 1956, but they are now common.
-Jim Fisher, Luton, UK (ejf jimella.co.uk)

As a teenager coming along in the ‘60s, nothing depicted a future that I might actually live to see as much as Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and to a lesser degree the ‘70s TV show, Space 1999. Those very titles, pointing to the new millennium, now seem oddly anachronistic.
-Russell Lott, Hattiesburg, Mississippi (russellwlott comcast.net)

Probably many readers will wistfully recall 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Pan Am Space Clipper transporting travelers to an Earth-orbit space station. Who would have foreseen that Pan American World Airways would no longer fly after 1991?
And many more are likely to cheer the Society for Creative Anachronism, in which contact lens-wearing mortals with fillings in their teeth and sneakers protecting their feet can pretend they live in the Middle Ages, cheerfully savoring its creative parts (dramatic clothing and martial arts, for example) unhampered by its miseries (plague, illiteracy, deadly warfare, etc.) and inconveniences (assembling that intricate clothing without a sewing machine).
-Nancy Meyer, Mundelein, Illinois (antares11 juno.com)

A good example of anachronism are summer Renaissance Faires which feature characters passing themselves off as Knights of the Round Table (which would place them in the 5th or 6th Centuries) or Robin Hood and Maid Marian (which would place them in the late 12th Century). Yet, the historical Renaissance period is generally placed from the 14th to 17th Centuries. I attended one of these events and saw men in suits of armor with flintlock pistols, which would be equivalent to soldiers at Bunker Hill armed with assault rifles.
-Robert P. Darling, Beloit, Wisconsin (rpdarlingdds charter.net)

To comment on the meaning of “nice” 500 years ago -- the recent (hilarious) series Good Omens is built around a book entitled, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, written in 1655. It is supposed to be the only entirely accurate book of prophecies ever written. I think Agnes would have been rather insulted if the title were actually “The Stupid and Accurate Prophecies” (besides being an oxymoron).
-Royal Harrison, La Canada, California (searex earthlink.net)

“Period” costumes with zippers (in movies set in the 19th century) are a common anachronism. The designers are more accurate now, thanks to people like Theodora Van Runkle, a brilliant costume designer. Many novels from the 21st century that are set in 19th century England use slangy 20th-century American locution. Just the fact that I notice it means I myself am anachronistic.
-Cindy Watter, Napa, California (hedgehogccw gmail.com)

A book I like is The Wyndham Case, the first of Jill Paton Walsh’s mysteries starring her Cambridge college nurse Imogen Quy. (Jill also was chosen to write books starring Dorothy L Sayers’s Peter Wimsey characters.) The essence of The Wyndham Case is ignorance of how dates have been changed over the last few centuries, with resulting anachronistic misunderstandings that have significant real-world implications.
I am a retired mathematician, and I also like the relevance of mathematics in a couple of the Imogen Quy stories!
-Bob Wilson, Fitchburg, Wisconsin (wilson math.wisc.edu)

There is a time-travel book called Doomsday Book written in 1992 by Connie Willis which has a number of anachronisms in it. It is set in 2054, and the most glaring anachronism is that mobile phones don’t exist! Telephones are still attached to places rather than people and the characters spend a lot of time trying to get people on the phone and finding they’re not there. This sets up all sorts of communication obstacles that simply wouldn’t exist today.
-Debbie Evans, Wellington, New Zealand (kiwidebbieevans outlook.com)

That famous anachronistic water bottle in this Downton Abbey promo photo.
-Jane Freeman, New York, New York (wordplayjane yahoo.com)

I find anachronisms often in even carefully researched historical novels. And, of course, “futuristic” science fiction written in the early days is full of customs that have (mostly and thankfully) died out, such as smoking and the breezy denigration of women. In the former category, the popular (and very good if forgotten) British novelist Marguerite Steen, in her once wildly successful novel The Sun is My Undoing, set in Bristol in the eighteenth century, has a woman wearing a magenta gown. Impossible. The hue called “magenta” was undoubtedly around in nature for a long time, but the actual dye only became possible in the nineteenth century, when aniline dyes were invented. It was named, for some reason, for a battle in Magenta, Italy in 1859.
-Judith Judson, Pittsford, New York (jjudson frontier.com)

In the 1972 movie, The Valachi Papers, there’s a scene that takes place in New York City during Prohibition. A mobster’s car goes flying off the road into the East River. There in the background are the Twin Towers. Rather poignant, since I’m sending this on 9/11/23.
-Danny Magowan, Baldwinsville, New York (rmagowan twcny.rr.com)

My favorite anachronism is from the futuristic cartoon The Jetsons. I’m sure there are many. Even to a kid in the 70s, that was part of its goofy charm. In the opening theme song, dear old dad George is sitting at breakfast reading the newspaper. Looking at it today, it’s almost painfully quaint. The digital takeover we are going through was hardly conceivable in the 60s when the cartoonist was imagining the future.
-Jennifer Stiever, Lewisville, Texas (jenbaby68 hotmail.com)

During 1950-1962, James Blish published Cities in Flight, a series of novels about the future of civilization several thousand years in the future. Two very obvious anachronisms: the computers which ran each city could not speak to the computers of any other city, and the City Manager used a slide rule!
-Robin DeLuca, Florida (rrd335 yahoo.com)

Anachronism: The Republican Party.
-Eric Mills, Toronto, Canada (erics web.net)