(Photo by Andrew Burton, Getty Images, used here non-commercially for academic purposes) 

     See previous blog post (CNN major error of fact: it aired as breaking news that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was submerged in 3 feet of water; it corrected the mistake minutes later but only after breaking the “news” over and over, complete with graphics.)

     CNN reported a few minutes ago that the NYSE would open Wednesday; earlier in the day, it said the last time the stock exchange was shut down for two consecutive days due to a storm,  was in 1888.

      —   looked it up, here’s what it was referring to: the Great Blizzard of 1888: From the March 13, 1888 edition of the New York Times – reprinted here in full for its quaint language: source: query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free

“The New York Times · Tuesday, March 13, 1888. IN A BLIZZARD’S GRASP. The worst storm the city has ever known. Business travel completely suspended.

“New York helpless in a tornado of wind and snow which paralyzed all industry, isolated the city from the rest of the country, caused many accidents and great discomfort, and exposed it to many dangers.

“The storm of wind and rain, which began to sweep over this city and the neighborhood on Sunday evening, gathered force as the night progressed. The temperature began to fall albeit and snow descended in succession and the wind be- came boisterous. Before daylight dawned yesterday a remarkable storm, the most annoying and detrimental in its results that the city has ever witnessed, was in full progress.

“When the people began to stir to go about their daily tasks and vocations, they found that a blizzard, just like those they have been accustomed to read about as occurring in the far West had struck this city and its environs and had held an embargo on the travel and traffic of the greatest city on the continent. What the presence of a blizzard meant was soon manifest.

“Before the day had well advanced, every horse-car and elevated railroad train in the city had stopped running; the streets were almost impassable to men or horses by reason of the huge masses of drifting snow; the electric wires- telegraph and telephone — connecting spots in the city or opening communication with places outside were nearly all broken; hardly a train was out from the city or came into it during the entire day; the mails were stopped, and every variety of business dependent on motion or locomotion was stopped.

“Thus the city, to a great extent, was at a standstill yesterday, and the prospects are not much better for to-day. People vexed at the collapse of all the principal means of intercommunication and transportation became reflective, and the result was a general expression of opinion that an immediate and radical improvement was imperative. So the blizzard may accomplish what months, if not years, of argument might have failed to do.

“Probably  had it not been for the blizzard the people of the city might have ignored one for an indefinite time enduring the nuisance of electric wires dangling from poles, of slow trains running on the trestlework, and slower cars drawn by horses in the streets dangerous with their center tearing rails. Now two things tolerably certain that a system of a really rapid transit which cannot be made inoperable by storms must be straightaway devised and as speedily as possible constructed and that all the electric wires — telegraph, telephone, fire alarms, and illuminating — must be put underground without any delay.

“The elevated roads and the elevated electric wires are not only made useless by a severe storm, but they are made dangerous. The city is liable to be put into darkness and the consequent perils. There is also that danger of conflagration through the failure of the fire alarm wires.

“To the great majority of municipal and suburban New-Yorkers the great blizzard was a surprise party of the worst kind. It began soon after midnight, and those who work on the newspapers — editors, reporters, compositors, pressmen, as well as the news vendors — went home between 2 and 4 o’clock yesterday morning realizing that an unusual tempest had begun. So did the marketmen and milkmen when they turned out for their usual labors.

“The milkmen, in fact were in many cases unable to get any milk at the stations on account of the non-arrival of the trains; the news vendors did not have the morning papers at the houses, and the bakers failed to come round with the morning rolls. Thackeray says that it is the small ills of life that worry the most, and probably thousands of New-Yorkers yesterday morning — good, steady churchgoing heads of families when they had to get through their breakfasts without their favorite newspaper, their hot buttered roll, and their fragrant coffee enriched with the boiling milk began to seriously question whether life was worth living after all, with all those trials and tribulations to undergo.

“As early as 7 o’clock the snow had got a good deal too deep for stout men to travel in with ease and the rapidity with which it grew worse was simply marvelous. The wind seemed to have a rotatory (sic) motion as well as a terrible direct propelling force.

“It had a power of slinging the snow into doorways and packing it up against the doors; of sifting it through window frames of piling it up in high drifts at street corners, of twirling it into hard mounds around elevated station, such as most New-Yorkers had never seen before. For the first time in their lives they knew what a Western blizzard was.

“Not that the wind was at all content with such doings. They were merely its playful tricks. Its spite was shown in driving showers of sleet and icy shot into one’s face that stung worse than the stings of the modest hornets. If the hapless pedestrian tried to escape by turning his face away the first thing he knew an extra gust took him, whirled him around like a teetotum, and giving him a —– —– (?) that blinded him and generally used him up so that he didn’t know anything, left him to his fate for the once entirely and completely discouraged.

“In looking back at the events of yesterday the most amazing thing to the residents of this great city must be the ease with which the elements were able to overcome the boasted triumph of civilization, particularly in those respects which philosophers and statesmen have contended permanently marked our civilization and distinguished it from the civilization of the old world — our superior means of intercommunication. Before the fury of the great blizzard they all went down, whether propelled by steam or electricity. The elevated trains became useless; so did the telegraph wires, the telephone wires, the wires for conveying the electric lights, the wires for giving the alarms of fire. And, worse than useless, they became dangerous.

“It is hard to believe in this last quarter of the nineteenth century that for even one day New-York could be so completely isolated from the rest of the world as if Manhattan Island was in the middle of the South Sea.” (March 13,  1888, NY Times)