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Who Wrote Dictionaries? A Monumental Mission and the World's Greatest Lexicographers

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  Writing a dictionary can seem humanly impossible if one looks at the size, volume and information that goes into one. However, a few men dedicated their entire lives to this work. James Murray: Author: Oxford English Dictionary James Murray, a Scottish school teacher wrote the first Oxford English Dictionary. The work began in 1879 and at that time, the dictionary was named, New English Dictionary. Five years into the task, Murray to his desperation realized he was still circling the alphabet ‘a’ and had only reached up to the word, 'ant'. He had a dedicated team of assistants to help him in the work. Murray also made a public call of assistance for volunteers to send him quotes that would help identify rare words and their usage. He received great help from many known and unknown volunteers who set themselves to this work. The volume of mail that went to Murray and his team and back was so huge that the local post office set up a special mailbox near his working shed, which ...
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Paraman, The Street Violinist: Memory of a Man

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  (The folk violin of Pulluvas; image source:  Kannanshanmugam,shanmugamstudio, Kollam , Wikipedia) The Village Visitors  Those were times when things were less complex than they now are. We lived in a bucolic countryside where everyone knew everyone else. The only outsiders who frequented the place were visiting relatives, a bunch of regularly appearing street vendors, the postman, the Gurkha (a man from Nepal who would be paid Rs 10 per month by each family for keeping vigil in the village during nights*), and our very own exclusive beggars. We knew them as they made rounds on almost expected dates and times. Paraman’s Song Paraman, the street violinist, had positioned himself between an artist and a beggar. In our culture, the members of the Pulluva community, who made exquisite music using two delightful musical instruments- a single-string local fiddle and a round mud pot with a tight wire wound across it- were the official local musicians. They would come to sing in...
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Travel Plan: A Trip to Understand The Bermuda Triangle

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  (Image source: grammidistoria.wordpress.com Hi Traveler,  You are a fan of mystery, the inexplicable, and you would love to go probing the geographies, home to such mysteries. For someone like you, the Bermuda Triangle is now not an intangible puzzle. You can visit this region of the sea by entering it from three land masses, which form the three endpoints to the triangle.  The Bermuda Triangle: Basic History and Facts An imaginary triangle drawn connecting Florida, the Bermuda Islands, and Puerto Rico in the North Atlantic Ocean will give you the Bermuda Triangle. The area of this sea stretch is around 1.3 to 3.9 million square kilometres. The exact boundaries of the triangle are not demarcated. Different people at different times set vague definitions of the area under the triangle.    In December 1945, five Navy training aeroplanes navigating the sky above the Bermuda Triangle in the Atlantic Ocean, with 14 men on board, disappeared. A rescue mission was la...
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