The front page on this day in 1976 showed a Canberra man listed in the Guiness Book of World Records.
Mr William A. Gold was an author with a large selection of works, having written about eight full-length books, seven novels, and more than 100 short stories.
Advertisement
As none of these had ever been published, he held the title of the world's least-successful author.
But all would change on this momentous day nearly 50 years ago, as The Canberra Times announced it would publish one out of Mr Gold's 100 or so short stories, breaking his own record of zero published works and pushing that figure up to one.
Mr Gold's story, titled "A Voice from the Past", was an entry a short-story competition held by The Canberra Times and Commonwealth Bank the previous year.
The story had been selected for publication anonymously, as the entries were numbered and did not show the writers' names.
The judges did not know it was written by Mr Gold until it had been chosen as the winner, and its number was compared with the list of authors, revealing it to be his story.
"I'll be damned," were Mr Gold's first words when he heard the good news. But he wasn't surprised, because he already knew it was "a hell of a good story".
"Nine out of 10 of my stories are lousy, but the ones that aren't are good," he said.
