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Case file

Simon Koshland

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “american businessman”. Today it says “bavarian -born american businessman and wool merchant”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “Kingdom of Bavaria-born American businessman and wool merchant”. It now reads “American businessman (1825–1896)”.
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 2025 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2025

Kingdom of Bavaria-born American businessman and wool merchant Simon Koshland (1825–1896) was a Bavarian -born American businessman, and wool merchant. He is the patriarch of the Koshland and Haas family of San Francisco. Jewish Museum of the American West .

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 1296745584.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “american businessman”. Today it says “bavarian -born american businessman and wool merchant”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “Kingdom of Bavaria-born American businessman and wool merchant”. It now reads “American businessman (1825–1896)”. Read the current article and compare.
2020Oct '232025
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 2020, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

american businessman

Now

bavarian -born american businessman and wool merchant

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.

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