Aha! Here's a DJIA historical typo alert

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: Miscellaneous

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Who's right about the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average: Dow Jones or...Dow Jones? This post is much ado about something trivial, so stop reading if you want, but please indulge me if you will.

Historical typo alert: WSJ.com says today that the Dow first closed above 2,000 on Jan. 9, 1987:

Financial Flashback
January 9, 1987
The stock market's New Year's rally carried the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its first close above 2000. It closed at 2002.25, up 8.30. The industrial average had settled in a range of 500 to almost 1000 for about 20 years.

As mentioned on Exchanges yesterday, NYTimes.com said the Dow closed at the record milestone on Jan. 8 of that year, not Jan. 9.

Ironically, another Dow Jones site, DowJonesIndexes.com, agrees with the Times. On that site, which I've always found to be a terrific reference, both the Dow Data page and the Index History finder say it happened on Jan. 8.

Like I said, much ado about a bit of historical trivia, but these are the kinds of things that get referenced here and there, by people like me. And it's so seldom that I spot a mistake that isn't my own!

Just before hitting the "publish" button, I was thinking: maybe the WSJ.com mention is a reference to what the Journal reported that day, i.e., that the average hit a record the previous day? If so, it oughtta be edited; it doesn't read that way.