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Twittering History

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BOSTON — John Quincy Adams, president, statesman — and Twitterer?

They may be two centuries old, but, written with staccato-like brevity, entries from one of Adams’s diaries resemble tweets sufficiently that they began appearing Wednesday on Twitter.

The Massachusetts Historical Society, under the Twitter tag JQAdams_MHS, is posting the entries, from a diary Adams started writing the day he left Boston for St. Petersburg to serve as minister, or ambassador, to Russia.

That day was Aug. 5, 1809, and the society chose Wednesday, precisely 200 years later, to post the daily entry from it. Thursday’s posting will be from Aug. 6, 1809, Friday’s from Aug. 7, and so on, at least until year’s end.

Comments

  1. avrdsAugust 15, 2009 at 5:42 PM

    I want a tweet from John Adams....

    Can you have them sent to your email address?

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsAugust 15, 2009 at 6:03 PM

    Well, just looked at his tweets -- he's even less interesting in writing than his father. Oh, well.

    GREAT idea though.

    ReplyDelete

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