Unread Gmail From the 70’s

For the last couple of days, Gmail has been showing one unread message, but I didn’t see any in my Inbox. This is the type of thing that can slowly drive me insane. I changed themes a couple weeks ago and thought it might be related (however unlikely). Changing themes again did nothing. From somewhere deep in my thinking machine came the idea to do a search for “label:unread“. I must have read that at some point in time, though I have no idea where.

Anyway, it worked. There were about 80 of them total, and I started selecting all of them to mark as read. Finally it got down to just one last one. I noticed it was marked as being in my inbox (unlike the others, which were most likely archived or in spam). It was from Adam Clayton (a name I don’t know). The subject was “Delivery Confirmation”. And it was sent September 21, 1976 (mere months before I was born). When it arrived, it slipped past spam filters and was dutifully placed in correct chronological order.

I’m not sure why the spammers would set the date like that, other than to accomplish what it did in my case, which was checking out the email (prescription drugs from Canada). But regardless, mystery solved. I won’t go insane after all.