More New York Times annoyance

Today's NY Times has an op-ed piece by Simon Winchester, author of a book about Krakatoa.

In the middle of the op-ed, Winchester throws in the following line:

As every American schoolchild knows, the most notorious rupture of this same fault occurred nearly a century ago, at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906 - an occurrence now known around the world as the great San Francisco Earthquake.

This is what drives me up the wall about the NY Times. For Winchester to write that "every American schoolchild knows" something is ridiculous. To write such a line about a detail of such minutiae as when an earthquake, even a very powerful one, struck San Francisco is almost delusional. For an editor to let it go by without flagging it is a disgrace. These aren't college students working at the university paper. These are, in theory, the finest journalists in America. They certainly get paid like they're the best. Perhaps they should act like the best.