161 years ago, the New York Times ran an article about a man named Solomon Northup, who was a free man from the North sold into slavery in the Deep South. (You can read that story here.)

Now, today, thanks to the success of the film 12 Years a Slave, an eagle-eyed New York Times reader noted that the story misspelled Northup's name as "Northrop"... twice. So, according to People Magazine, today -- almost 200 years after the story first ran in print -- the paper of record printed a correction to this evident spelling error.

"An article on Jan. 20, 1853, recounting the story of Solomon Northup, whose memoir '12 Years a Slave' became a movie 160 years later that won the best picture Oscar at the 86th Academy Awards on Sunday night, misspelled his surname as Northrop. And the headline misspelled it as Northrup. The errors came to light on Monday after a Twitter user pointed out the article in The Times archives," wrote the paper.

According to NBC News, the correction came about after author Rebecca Skloot tweeted a link to the original story online, and pointed out the error. Skloot is best known for her book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks." 

"Interesting: That original 1853 article spelled Solomon's name differently in headline vs main article," wrote Rebecca on Twitter.

The correction notwithstanding, The NY Times maintains that their account of Northup's fate is "a more complete and authentic record than has yet appeared."

When notified of the correction that came as a result of her efforts, Skloot took it all in stride. "The irony of it all is, I'm a terrible speller and proofreader," she wrote in response to Twitter user Loukas Christodolu, who remarked that she should next get to proofreading "The Canterbury Tales," because there were "all sorts of funny spellings there!"