Even though Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948) takes place on a single day (27 June), the story refers back to previous events that can be put into a timeline. It begins “when the first people settled down to make a village here”, then continues later with the replacement of the original black box for the lottery. That occurred long before Old Man Warner, the oldest person in the village, was born 77 years ago. More recently, Mr. Summers, who conducts the lottery, convinced the villagers to replace wood chips with slips of paper, and one year before the story, the villager chosen by the lottery to be murdered was Mr. Watson. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 September 2026)