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The Virginia Gazette Foreign News January 19, 1739
Richmond, Richmond, Virginia
What is this article about?
A hare walked deliberately through Edinburgh streets unhurt, causing superstitious townspeople to see omens, witches, or prophecies.
Quality green show the numbers
Measured from the scan
— how cleanly the OCR engine read the characters
- Mean ink quality
- 99.0% The length-weighted average confidence across the OCR lines — the mean of exactly the per-line scores whose tails the two figures below report. Typical is 99%.
- Illegible ink
- 0.0% Text sitting in OCR-detected lines that scored below 80% confidence — very shaky reads. Weighted by line length, so one long bad line counts for more than a short one.
- Uncertain ink
- 0.0% Text in lines that scored 80–90% — somewhat shaky reads.
- Matches source
- 96.66% How closely the served text matches the raw OCR of the same boxes, letter by letter, after collapsing spacing and case. This measures agreement, not correctness: the OCR is often wrong and the extractor corrects it, so 100% does not mean perfect, and a low figure usually means poor scan text was rewritten rather than that text was lost (length vs source shows loss).
- Length vs source
- 98.62% Below 100% means text was dropped from the OCR; above means text was added to make it read.
Assembled by the extraction model
— whether the stitched-together text holds up; catches layout and segmentation errors, which the scores above cannot see
- Transcription confidence
- 97.0% (typical 96%) How cleanly the extractor could assemble what it was given. Low here with clean ink scores points at layout analysis — the characters were read correctly but grouped or ordered wrongly.
- Comprehension
- 90.0% Whether the piece reads coherently start to finish. Can stay high while transcription confidence drops, when only part of the component is affected.
Clipping
Full Text
Edinburgh, Oct. 17. Saturday Afternoon, an uncommon Accident happened here, which engaged the Attention of Hundreds of Spectators. A Hare walked at a very deliberate Pace, thro' Portsburgh, came in at the West Port, up the Grass-market, West-bow, and Castle-hill, and escaped unhurt: An extraordinary Sight made the Vulgar look upon it as ominous; the good Women in the Bow imagined that it foretold that the Clergy should get a Hair in the Town's Neck; but the less Orthodox thought indeed it was no bad Emblem of a certain Sort of Men, who are as foolish as the stupid Hare, when they venture to bid Defiance to a superior Power: The Old Women are persuaded Puss was a Witch, and the Curious are very busy searching Rymer's and Pedan's Prophecies, to find out the Meaning of the Prodigy.
What sub-type of article is it?
Human Interest
What keywords are associated?
Hare Edinburgh Streets
Omen Superstition
Witch Hare Prophecy
Where did it happen?
Edinburgh
Foreign News Details
Primary Location
Edinburgh
Event Date
Oct. 17
Outcome
hare escaped unhurt.