Correction: I may regret this column

 Once you get past the crazy crime stories, Dilbert comics, Tony Wade columns and the sports-on-TV listings, the most interesting thing in any daily newspaper is the corrections.

That's where editors hang out their dirty laundry, admitting they had the wrong starting time for that City Council meeting or that flour was left out of the recipe on the food page or that President Obama's first name was misspelled on the front page (I did that once, by the way). It's a modern version of humiliations of the Middle Ages, when people were put in stocks and had bad fruit thrown at them.

Correction: In the previous paragraph, stocks were described as a Middle Ages punishment. Those punishments actually were used as late as the 19th century and were not limited to bad fruit being thrown at those kept in them.

See? They're amusing, while allowing you to feel superior to whomever made the mistake.

My most difficult correction came after a writer who didn't work for the paper "covered" spring training for the Daily Republic in the late 1980s. He wrote about a woman sportswriter kissing San Francisco Giants manager Roger Craig, but he used the wrong name for the writer – identifying the woman by the name of a male writer who had one of those difficult-to-tell names. A few weeks later, the male writer contacted me and demanded a correction.

I first wrote that "(Writer's name) isn't a woman, but is actually a man," which made the problem seem worse. Then I tried "(Writer's name) didn't kiss Roger Craig. It was actually a woman who did," which similarly confused the matter. Finally, I came up with "(Writer's name) was misidentified in a story."

See? Corrections can be funny. They also are cleansing in a way – in how many other areas of life do people publicly admit they made a mistake?

With that introduction, I'd like to take the rest of my space today to set the record straight on previous columns I've written in the Daily Republic:

In a June 5, 1971, column, I wrote, "Richard Nixon will undoubtedly go down as the most honest president in United States history." I regret the error.

In a Nov. 16, 1993, column, I identified George Lopez as "the father of our country and the first president of the United States." Lopez was actually the third president.

In a Feb. 22, 2007, column, I referred to the Oakland Raiders as "a once-great franchise that is now in competition to be the worst team in professional sports." That sentence should have excluded the phrase "in competition to be."

Despite what I wrote in an Aug. 3, 1984, column, there actually is an "I" in Daily Republic.

In a Jan. 10, 1996, column, I wrote that Mickey Dolenz and Davey Jones were members of The Beatles. They were not. They were members of The Rolling Stones.

In a March 18, 1987, column, I quoted the lyrics to the Canadian national anthem as being "Oh Canada, we stand on cars and freeze." The real lyrics are, "Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for thee."

Finally, in the first paragraph of this column, I wrote that Tony Wade columns are one of most interesting things in newspapers. It should have said Kelvin Wade. I regret the error.

Oh, and go ahead and add a cup of flour to every recipe we've ever published. Just in case.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.