[April 5, 2007 UPDATE: Within two days, a very nice woman from the CBC Archives Website got back to me, with thanks for my “catch” and the site is now correct…they externally validated my claim and it was correct. Thanks, Carol! Yay, turns out you can make a difference in the world! ;-]

I have just been reminded of the hazards of web-based research. The problem is that somebody may get a fact wrong, and then the error is duplicated and quoted. And stored — you know, for posterity. Some may hope that the “most often quoted” fact is the correct one — this is certainly not guaranteed to be the case for the Internet, where errors multiply and become hard to eliminate!

Even the venerable CBC archive site gets it wrong, it seems… I was looking up details on the history of the FLQ (a Quebec separatist terrorist organization). One of the often-mentioned incidents is referred to as “Black Friday”, which several sites (including the CBC’s) claim was May 13, 1963. An explosives expert was seriously injured trying to defuse one of ten mailbox bombs in Westmount.

However, looking at calendars, it seems that May 13, 1963 was a Monday. I found some other sources that seem to indicate the correct date was May 17 (though those other sites don’t refer to it as “Black Friday”, at least it is a Friday!).

When I’m back in Montreal, I guess it’s off to the libraries and newspaper archives for me!

P.S. Grumpy stickler for detail that I am, I sent a note off to the CBC Archive folks…we’ll see if they recheck the detail and correct it!

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