Historic vs historical

[Nonverbis]

Upstream Proficiency by Virginia Evans and Jenny Dooley

Isn't it a mistake here? Maybe historical is correct?

These are ordinary newspapers. All the newspapers of that time wrote about that.

I would understand a newspaper front page as historic if for example an official government's newspaper published a new constitution of that country. But these front-pages in the screenshot are just general, historical but not historic.

Could you comment?

 

[5jj]

It's the front-page reports that are described as historic. I suppose one could argue that it's the events reported rather than the reports of them that are historic, but I don't have anything against the word there.

 

[Nonverbis]

Thank you. But will you be against 'historical' here?

 

[jutfrank]

I say that historic is precisely the right word. These front pages are historical artefacts in their own right.

 

[Tdol]

The sinking of the Titanic is probably the most famous ship sinking in history- it definitely falls in the historic category. The newspaper is merely reporting it, but on this day it is reporting something historic- it doesn't have to come from a government ministry to be historic. Few of us get our news directly from government departments.

 

[probus]

And governments have often proven to be unreliable as sources of news. For example, the influenza pandemic of 1918 is called the Spanish flu only because newspapers around the world caved to government pressure to suppress the news, except in Spain.

 

[Tdol]

I only found that out in these Covid times when people were using geographical names. It's strange that you get to carry the blame for telling the truth- I had always assumed it started in Spain.