I previously wrote that fake news is not new, citing a fictitious story from the turn of the 20th century.
Another story caught my eye, not so much because it was unbelievable, rather because it had a glaring math error.
Poor, smiling convict Tony Gorona
The story was of a young man, age 18, who was convicted in 1929 for “several counts of robbery” and was sentenced to 90 years in jail. Even though that sentence sounds harsh, Tony smiled because he had calculated his sentence to be “only 105,921 days to go,” concluding, “That’s easy.”
Repeated many times
This story was repeated in many newspapers across the United States between June and September, appearing more than 50 times. The earliest source credit I found was to “(United News)” in The Atlanta Constitution, with other papers giving credit to “(UP),” United Press, or no credit given at all.
Every version of the story repeated the 90 year sentence that was 105,921 days with no substantial changes to the text from copy to copy.
None of the copies had any hint that they were making fun of Tony’s math.
Just a quick glance…
If you have over 105,000 days over 90 years, it should be easy to see this works out to more than 1000 days per year.
It would take more that 290 years to amount to 105,921 days.
Perhaps I am missing some humor here, though the initial headline proclaimed the huge number of days as the actual sentence, not Tony’s math.
No other evidence of Tony or his family
Even accounting for variations of the spelling of his names, there are no records for anyone remotely close to being this Tony Gorona. The best match is an Anthony Garoni living in Brooklyn, though he was in New York getting married in 1935. There was a Tony Corona from San Antonio who was sentenced to 10 years for robbery, though not until 1935.
There’s no grave, no Census entries, no convict register record that matches convincingly.
Plausible?
Even without considering the lack of corroboration, the story itself is a bit odd. What reporter would be in the position to have seen the smile or hear Tony’s “that’s easy” proclamation? And why did nobody see the absurdity of the math error without comment?
This just seems fabricated out of thin air.
Before calculators were ubiquitous.
Great review of these articles! I have often done the 365 x ___ math problem. Offhand I know 50 years is around 18,250 days. It’s hard to think whether people of the day were better at mental math or worse than we are today. Seems without calculators they would have excelled at mental math. Apparently there’s no math prerequisite in journalism school. Weird that the subject of the sentencing has no provenance. It is sad that news sells papers regardless…