My hackish Ruby script for hopping to a random NYT issue in the years 1851 - 1922 (ie, in the public domain)

times_machine.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

years = (1851..1922).to_a
months = (1..12).to_a

def max_day_for_month(month, year)
  case month
  when 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12
    31
  when 9, 4, 6, 11
    30
  when 2
    (year % 4 == 0 && year % 100 != 0) ? 29 : 28
  end
end

year = years.sample
month = months.sample
day = (1..max_day_for_month(month, year)).to_a.sample

url = "http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/#{year}/#{ "%02d" % month }/#{ "%02d" % day }/issue.html"

`open #{url}`