alt Hacker NewsSome (un?)reliable sources on the Internet claim that it was actually written by a man named M.J. Shields and published as a letter to The Economist in the 1940s
Some (un?)reliable sources on the Internet claim that it was actually written by a man named M.J. Shields and published as a letter to The Economist in the 1940s
Yes, that's covered in the thread I linked to. The Economist letter was in 1971, and contributed wording that made it into the meme later on.