Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I can remember when my dad took the family to New York City for the first time. He told us that we would pass through a huge tunnel under the Hudson River called “The Lincoln Tunnel”. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to see this great tunnel. I imagined going deep underground with the river above our heads. Would it be dark? How long is it? How will I know when we get there?

As we approached the helix on route 3, there was a series of large overpasses we passed under. I asked, “Dad, was THAT the Lincoln Tunnel?” His reply, of course, was no. Then another overpass came and I asked, “Is THAT it?!”. He replied, “Jeffrey, you will know it when you see it.” In other words, if I had to ask, then that couldn’t possibly be it.

Naturally, as we spiraled down the helix into the toll booths I marveled at those 3 great looming archways leading into darkness. It was very clear to me then: THIS was the Lincoln Tunnel!

On April 15, 2019, thousands of horrified Parsians and tourists looked on, many with tears in their eyes as Notre Dame was on fire. Many of us remember watching the fire as well, seeing flames shoot into the air and rapidly spread over the Gothic building’s roof, known as “The Forest” because of its long planks of 800-year-old wood.

The next day, the French President vowed to rebuild the edifice within five years. While many thought a complete restoration would take decades, five years later, the historic renovation is nearly 90% complete. 2,000 oak trees were sourced from forests around Europe for the rebuild. Some of them are up to 400 years old. They were left to dry for 12 to 19 months before the carpenters used them. The estimated cost was $760 million. As of April 15, 2024, 340,000 donors from more than 150 countries have donated around $895 million. 

Ahead of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, work by this team of carpenters, scaffolding experts, professional climbers, organ mechanics, and others continues at the cathedral. While most of the modern building methods are being employed, there are tools that were re-created on site to match those used a thousand years ago by the original builderss.

The word “deadline” has an interesting, and oft, well, “deadly” history.

Earliest occurrences of the word seemed to have referenced a fishing angler’s weighted line which would hang perfectly still, or “dead” in the water, bait attached, to attract unsuspecting fish who, upon biting such line, would soon find themselves also “dead.”

Its meaning was later expanded to refer to any fixed or immovable line.

But it was the ravages of war which would give the word its next iteration. Enter one infamous Confederate Civil War prison commander, Henry Wirz, responsible for the operations at the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

In 1864, Wirz was put in control of Camp Sumter, a newly-established internment camp for Union soldiers located near Andersonville in rural Georgia. Over the remaining 14 months of the war, Camp Sumter grew to become one of the largest prisoner of war camps in the entire Confederacy. At its peak, it held more than 30,000 Union prisoners, all of whom shared an enormous 16.5-acre open-air paddock—conditions inside of which were notoriously grim. Disease and malnutrition were rife, and a lack of clean water, warm clothing, and adequate sanitation led to the deaths of many of the camp’s prisoners. Of the 45,000 Union prisoners held in the Camp at one time or another, it is estimated that almost a third succumbed to Sumter’s squalid and inhumane conditions.

But wait, there’s more. One of most damning examples of his inhumanity was his implementation of what became known as the Camp’s deadline:

“ … a line around the inner face of the stockade or wall enclosing said prison, and about twenty feet distant and within said stockade; and so established said dead line, which was in many places an imaginary line, in many other places marked by insecure and shifting strips of [boards nailed] upon the tops of small and insecure stakes or posts, he … instructed the prison guard stationed around the top of said stockade to fire upon and kill any of the prisoners aforesaid who might touch, fall upon, pass over or under or across the said “dead line ... “ — Report of the Secretary of War, October 1865

Wirz must have been deemed to have of “crossed the line” of human decency, because he was found guilty of war crimes, and was hanged on the November 10, 1865. 

*Execution of Captain Henry Wirz in 1865 / Library of Congress

By the early 20th century, with its wartime inhumanity connotations nothing more than a speck in American culture’s rear view mirror, a new meaning emerged from the pages rapidly churning off journalistic printing presses.

Printers used the word to describe that point at the bottom of a type case (printing tray), below which typeset could not be added. It was the "deadline" on the tray. Journalists, rushing to get their stories to press, competed to get space on the page before the “deadline” was "set" and there was no more room to include another story.

While the typesetting machines of the early 20th century are likewise but a speck in our rear view windows, the connotation of the term has since stuck and expanded. Today, the word deadline is used broadly to refer to any date or time by which something must be accomplished.

It may no longer exclusively refer to matters of life and death, but urgency is still at the core of its meaning.