Ok, I didn't know this, and I'm thinking it may be a 'little known' quirk.
I saw, some time ago, a comment that to read threads in order (where the Mudcat collapse had caused major problems) it was only necessary to choose the "printer friendly" option from the top of any thread.
This worked fine for a while, and I assumed that eventually the threads would be re-sorted by date order. However,..

Today I viewed a thread with Jeremy Taylor lyrics, and used 'printer friendly' to view it in date order.
I then put a link to it in another thread Lift Girl's Lament
It was only on following my own link that I realised that anyone accessing the thread via my link would also get the date-sorted version. Looking at the link in closer detail I see that it varies from the norm in quoting thread_pf.cfm?threadid=38601. Clearly the addition of "pf" is what makes this possible.

If this is not a well known quirk, then others creating links to old threads may also wish to utilise it.

CHEERS

Nigel