In 2005 Wikipedia's first sentence called it “retired irish soldier and peace-keeper”. Today it says “retired irish army colonel”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the October 6, 2023 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now.Red text: written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot.1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in October 6, 2023
Desmond Travers (born 1941) is a retired Irish Army colonel. During his years with the army he served with various United Nations and European Union peacekeeping forces. Since his retirement from the army in 2001, he has taught military affairs at the Institute for International Criminal Investigations in The Hague . He also served on the institutes board of directors. In 2009 together with Richard Goldstone , Christine Chinkin , and Hina Jilani , he was appointed to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict . The report that the mission subsequently published is commonly referred to as the Goldstone Report and Travers is credited as one of the four co-authors.
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 1170581464.
The opening as it stood in 2010
Desmond Travers (born 1941) is a retired Irish soldier and peace-keeper. Since retirement he has studied international law and continued working in peace-keeping, most recently as one of the authors of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict , or "Goldstone Report".
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 371129181.
The opening as it stood in 2015 1 passage from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Desmond Travers (born 1941) is a retired Irish Army colonel.During his years with the army he served with various United Nations and European Union peacekeeping forces.Since his retirement from the army in 2001, he has taught military affairs at the Institute for International Criminal Investigations in The Hague .He also served on the institutes board of directors.In 2009 together with Richard Goldstone , Christine Chinkin , and Hina Jilani , he was appointed to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict .The report that the mission subsequently published is commonly referred to as the Goldstone Report and Travers is credited as one of the four co-authors.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 621190479.
Today
In 2005 Wikipedia's first sentence called it “retired irish soldier and peace-keeper”. Today it says “retired irish army colonel”. Read the current article and compare.
2010
2015
2020
Oct '23
2025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.
What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2010, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
retired irish soldier and peace-keeper
Now
retired irish army colonel
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.
