Warren Buffett Keeps a 123-Year-Old Copy of 'The New York Times,' and the Reason Is Inspiring

He wasn’t born yet (he’s old, but not that old), but we know that he knows because it was memorialized in a front-page New York Times article on May 10 of that year, which Buffett later framed and kept prominently on the wall in his office in Omaha.

TROY, N.Y., May 9 — The body of Samuel Bolton Jr., a prominent brewer and businessman of this city, was found today in a vat of hot beer. Mr. Bolton had but a short time before returned from a pleasure drive, and chatted pleasantly with friends. About noon, his hat was seen beside the vat of boiling beer and an investigation brought to light his body in the steaming liquid.

It’s explained by the story that ran next to the story about Bolton in that ancient edition of the Times. It’s not clear that the writers at the time even recognized the connection, but in retrospect it’s clear. This second one was headlined:

In 1962, when I set up our office … I put seven items on the wall [including] photocopies of … [newspaper] pages from financial history. One of those cases was in May of 1901 when the Northern Pacific corner occurred.

It will be less messy to paraphrase than to quote the next part of what Buffett had to say directly. He explained that this was a financial catastrophe that came about when two massively wealthy railroad tycoons each tried to buy enough stock to take control of a railway known as the Northern Pacific.

Apparently he had shorted Northern Pacific’s stock, basically, made a financial bet that the price would go down, without understanding that the two railroad barons’ actions were secretly manipulating the price.

“That fellow probably understood,” Buffett said, “how impossible it was that in one day a stock could go from $170 to $1,000 to cause margin calls on everything. And yet he ended up in the vat of hot beer. I’ve never wanted to end up in a vat of hot beer.”

I suppose there’s a part of me that appreciates the idea that Bolton died such an undignified death under such difficult circumstances, and yet if not for that moment Buffett, you, nor I would ever have heard his name.