Case file
Horatio Spafford
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “prominent american lawyer”. Today it says “american lawyer and presbyterian church elder”.
Found by software in Wikipedia's own edit history. Not yet read by hand. The quoted words are Wikipedia's.
Compared with the live article on 2026-08-04.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2010 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.
Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now.
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The opening as it read in 2010
Horatio Gates Spafford Horatio Gates Spafford (October 20, 1828, Troy, New York - October 16, 1888, Jerusalem ) was a prominent American lawyer , best known for penning the Christian hymn It Is Well With My Soul , following a family tragedy in which four of his daughters died.1 Source of middle name and birth/death information2
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 367877278.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “prominent american lawyer”. Today it says “american lawyer and presbyterian church elder”. Read the current article and compare.
| 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | Oct '23 | 2025 |
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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
prominent american lawyer
Now
american lawyer and presbyterian church elder
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.