Thanks. When the NY Times retracts something damaging to their leash-holders I get suspicious.
Me too. :-)
> Also, Wikipedia should explain the reason for their later removal...
Yes, that change was significant enough that it ought to have been noted. The problem is we don’t know when the change was made. The 500,000 was there in the “20:19, 24 March 2009” version (your WayBackMachine version), and checking the next few years, I see it stayed there a long time. It was still there in the “13:56, 7 July 2012” version, so it’s a relatively recent deletion.
I may check some more later and try to find the exact version in which it was first omitted (if you don’t do that yourself in the meantime).