While trying to find a date tie-in for this month's column I realized that the August column of last year was also dated on the 25th of the month. The date tie-in for that column dealt with the rather embarrassing performance that a then new technology (the steam locomotive) gave in a race designed to prove its superiority over the horse.

But of late I've been spending a great deal of time with dates, sifting through them, focusing on them. So it wasn't particularly surprising when I suddenly realized that I've got another date, in the same year, but almost a month later, for that same event.

Which date is the correct one? With a distance of about 170 years it's hard to tell. Certainly there's still some authentic document around that can settle the matter, but I doubt that anyone is going to devote much time to finding it. And in the long run, of course, the precise date is of minimal significance. More than anything else, the date offers us a handle by which we can latch onto a particular moment on a continuum and reflect on it for a moment. So though whether the Tom Thumb race actually took place in August or in September of 1830 is an interesting question, it's also an irrelevant one. The locomotive lost that particular race, and was the uncontested winner in the overall competition.

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