When numbers instead of letters are used to spell a whole word it is called leet – which, in leet, is written as 1337. Another example is n00b, a term for newbie. Andsoforth.

Leet originated in the 1980s in relay chat services and on bulletin boards. If you look at it for the first time it might seem difficult to understand but you’ll be surprised how quickly you will catch it. Train your brain with this example of leet:

7H15 M3554G3
53RV35 7O PR0V3
H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N
D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5!
1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5!
1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG
17 WA5 H4RD BU7
N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3
Y0UR M1ND 1S
R34D1NG 17
4U70M471C4LLY
W17H 0U7 3V3N
7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17,
B3 PROUD! 0NLY
C3R741N P30PL3 C4N
R3AD 7H15.

Glad you caught that! As you’ve noticed, you can also combine the use of leet, textese and normal spelling or even morph it.

5p34k1ng 0f wh1ch, a1s0 c: Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch

When the Webster dictionary was published in 1828, contemporaries commented that it lacked real knowledge, was full of  crudities and errors, and was of little purpose. Webster was not a newcomer to the literary scene. His spelling book, called the Blue-Black Speller because of its binding, was one of the best-selling books of the 19th century. Even so, Webster took a comparatively small royalty advance on his dictionary, expecting it to sell 250,000 copies. He didn’t expect that it would go on to sell more than 30 million copies during the next 12 years.

Two of the men who would continue to benefit from Webster’s fifty years of labor were Charles and George Merriam, thus the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of today.

Perhaps the most famous dictionary is the Oxford English Dictionary. When the Philological Society of London decided in 1857 to compile the English language, they did not realize the extent of the task. Eventually in 1879, James A H Murray was appointed to gather a group of linguists to further the compilation, estimating that it would consist of 6,400 pages in two volumes. Five years later they had only reached the word ‘ant’.

In April 1928, 50 years after it was started, the Oxford English Dictionary was finally published. It consisted of 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes. The latest complete edition covers more than 600,00 words over 22,000 pages, includes 33,000 Shakespeare quotations, and is bound in 20 volumes. All of which, in electronic edition at 540 megabytes big, is also available on a single CD or a single USB memory stick… or online. Or – proof of progress – download it on your Kindle in less than a minute.

The first book on travel, aptly called “Travel” was published by Jehan de Mandeville (anglicized to Sir John Mandeville) in 1357. It became a best seller and was translated into 9 languages.

Trips used to be organized by individuals or small groups who accompanied their guests. In 1758, Cox & Kings became the world’s first travel agency – not necessarily escorting the travelers to their destination. Thomas Cook (1808 – 1892) also took large groups on tour and then founded his company in the 1860s. The first travel agency in the United States was founded in 1887 by Walter T. Brownell.

Tourism is the biggest industry in most countries – except the United States, where entertainment is the biggest industry.

According to Greek legend the sphinx put a riddle to all who passed by and devoured those who failed to guess it. Getting it right meant the death of the monster a claim to the throne and the hand of Queen Jocasta. After many had died, one got it right: Oedipus.

What was the riddle that Oedipus solved?

The riddle that the sphinx put:

What animal walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at night?

Oedipus’s answer:

Man, for in the morning, the infancy of his life, he creeps on all fours; at noon, in his prime, he walks on two feet; and, when the darkness of old age comes over him, he uses a stick for better support as a third foot.

Oedipus, a mythical Greek king, was the son of Queen Jocasta and therefore had to marry his mother.

Thus aoccdrnig to Matt Davis, Cmabrigde Uinervtisy.

The largest ever encyclopedia is the Yung-Lo Ta-Tien encyclopedia. It was commissioned in 1403 by Emperor Yongle and is also known as the Yongle Encyclopedia. Written by 2000 writers, it was completed in 1408 and bound in 11,095 volumes, of which some 400 volumes survived.

In another book, called ‘A Modest Proposal’, Swift suggested that the solution to poverty and overpopulation is to raise and eat the children, as one would with sheep or cattle.

Swift wrote a lot of stories but burned most of it. He died in 1745, aged 78. The last piece he wrote, his will, provided funds for setting up a hospital in Dublin, Ireland (where he lived) for, as he puts it, “idiots and lunatics.”

Jonathan Swift quotes:

May you live all the days of your life.

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

More Jonathan Swift quotes