Thanks. During my first attempts at applying date range filters on Google Groups, everything came up empty, even for later dates (1999-ish), so I thought perhaps they were gone. I am now getting results. I don't know if I originally hit GG while it was napping or something, but I am getting useful results now. (1/1/94-1/1/95 yields results, while 1/1/93-1/1/94 comes up empty.)

This appears to be the first message, on that most persistent of mailing list/newsgroup topics, "Am I First?":

Post #2 had more meat (Python FAQ):

Thanks for the help, folks. I believe I am off and running...

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