Heh. I got into computing in the 80s, and your other headlines are much more plausible. I did find a very interesting library book Algorithms in SNOBOL4 by Gimpel, so I actually got familiar with it -- but that was sheer luck.

(The book's title is misleading now: it doesn't much overlap a modern undergrad intro to algorithms. It's more "here are examples and techniques of programming in SNOBOL".)