The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 01:06, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

William Tarrant

• ... that after William Tarrant was sacked from the civil service of British Hong Kong, he became a journalist and ran a 12-year-long vendetta that led to his imprisonment? Source: "Tarrant lost his position in the colonial administration in 1847 as a result of an allegation [against] William Caine ... Excluded from the colonial administration, Tarrant decided to embark on a new career as a journalist ... The end of Tarrant's career in Hong Kong came when he was sued once again ... by his old enemy William Caine, now Lieutenant-Governor, against whom Tarrant had waged what was by then a twelve-year public vendetta. He was found guilty ... and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment." (all parts of the hook are stated in [1])

• Reviewed: Robert Michael Forde

Created by Nizolan (talk). Self-nominated at 00:31, 12 July 2019 (UTC).

Hmm new enough and long enough, no evidence of plagiarism, etc. My favorite sentence in here is "A man of obscure origin, ..." but unfortunately that part is not verified in the source. I don't really want to go through every sentence right now; I'd rather hear from Nizolan first. Drmies (talk) 01:23, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

@Drmies: Thanks for noticing the missing cite—it must have dropped out while I was rearranging references. That should also be from Endacott, who says he was from a "humble family" and that the circumstances of how he got to China were disputed, which hopefully rendering as "of an obscure origin" isn't too big a leap (at any rate there are no sources at all on what he did before 1837). I added the ref. —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 01:36, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Nizolan, thanks for that. Usually I'm not so picky, but I will be here: "humble" means something specific here, in terms of class, which makes even more sense with the following comment, that he "served before the mast" (are you familiar with the expression? it's the place for the regular sailors because the officers are all behind the mast--but Ishmael will tell you the air is much cleaner there. see also the less high-falutin' companion volume to Moby-Dick, Two Years Before the Mast). Anyway, I latched on to this also because I just taught Marlowe's Doctor Faustus: Faustus is born, "his parents base of stock...". So "humble", I think, really matters, and it might signal also that his origins weren't "obscure" (that is, unknown), but rather that they weren't worth talking about, for instance. Anyway, I'm checking out the rest of the article. Thanks. Drmies (talk) 13:50, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

@Drmies: That's a good point, and I think you're right that I was conflating "humble" and "unknown". In my research I actually determined that it should theoretically be possible to track down details of his origins (place/date of birth and family), though I couldn't make a positive identification from the online records. Cheers. —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 14:17, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

What odd interests you have for a native (?) speaker of Hungarian! I'm guessing you fell in with your most exciting history professor, or read some book on Asian history and never looked back... I hope there's employment in that field. Drmies (talk) 14:24, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

• Drmies (talk) 13:56, 13 July 2019 (UTC)