The article says it’s never been this hot since 1880, which I believe is when they started recording this data - it didn’t mention it was this hot then.
Do you have additional info to claim it was this temp in 1880?
There have been many reconstructions of global temperatures before 1880 using a variety of temperature proxies. A nice summary in one image is given on Wikipedia [1].
They also mix proxies but superimpose temperature records from the last 150 years. A better curve would be using one set of proxy data to maintain consistency.
Do you have additional info to claim it was this temp in 1880?