The annoying 'What's the Black Line For' Treasure Hunt every time it happens could be eliminated by having a tooltip appear on hovering over the black line with something along the lines of "Bill Smith dies."
For extra points, a <LINK to some News Article Telling Us about Bill Smith> could be included.
If Google can do that when it shows a 'special day' image, why can't HN??
Could be a culture marker. It's in keeping with the minimalist aesthetic. A signal to find the news.
Usually it's in the top 30 within a couple of hours. Today's appears to have been [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41201555]