Word: alphabet
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Illiteracy, like all evils, is sometimes a blessing. So thinks the Russian Ministry of Education, at all events. Of late the Ministry took the Russian alphabet in hand, examined it for superfluous members, pruned here, excised there, threw five letters out bodily, published a new, curtailed alphabet which shortens the written Russian language by one-twelfth and makes its spelling "twice as logical." It was pointed out that had not illiteracy abounded in Russia, the Ministry would have encountered the same difficulty faced by the late Theodore Roosevelt
...question was raised in the Ministry of Education of introducing the Roman alphabet, which is the one we use in writing English, instead of the modified Greek character in which Russian has always been written. Psychologists claim that the Roman small letters, with their projections above and below the line, present a contour more readily grasped by the eye than the 'solid blocks of Russian lower case characters. Thus MAJILHHK which
...usually incomplete and frequently unreliable press despatches reported last week from Seattle the introduction of a new type of Japanese typewriter in Japanese wholesale houses of Washington. It has but one key and types 7,026 characters in addition to the English alphabet. A small index is supplied to enable the operator to look up unusual characters. The machine types 60 words a minute. Having gathered all the seemingly impossible features of the invention and having failed to mention the means by which such marvels are performed (as they may or may not be), the newspaper reports said nothing further...
...draw in 1863, in California, when he was 23 years old. He had some success, came to New York for more. First he drew animals and published his drawings, chiefly in magazines for children. He was asked to illustrate a poem by Arthur Gillman, The Revolt of the Alphabet, to be published in St. Nicholas. It was in the margins around this poem that the first Brownies capered and grimaced; after that the magazine rarely appeared without them. Remarkable creatures they were, about an inch high; their bodies were uncouth but agile ? spindle-shanked, with rotund small bellies; they...
Certainly Strauss, at 60, has behind him a record of achievement that could be equalled by few. At the age of six he was already composing. His biographer Steinitzer says: "He wrote notes before he learned the letters of the alphabet." At 16 he was a prodigy of prodigies; he had written songs, piano pieces, chamber music, orchestral overtures and choral works, nearly a hundred in number. One of these, a trifle called Whipped Cream, is now being resurrected in Vienna...