Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and appeared on the 1947project.

July 29 is Elizabeth Short’s birthday—she would have been 81. Although horoscopes were a regular feature in the Examiner in the 1940s, The Times didn’t begun running them until Jan. 8, 1951, when Carroll Richter’s Astrological Forecast appeared next to the weather report. The Times, however, was certainly in the vanguard in offering star charts for pets.

Although The Times didn’t have a horoscope, it ran a daily Bible verse on the editorial page, right below the masthead. Here’s the one for Elizabeth Short’s birthday:

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy—St. James, III, 17

The daily Bible verse disappeared from The Times’ editorial page Oct. 23, 1970.