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Simon Winchester: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Simon Winchester, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• San Francisco's 1906 earthquake killed far more people than officials admitted

  The April 1906 earthquake and the fires it triggered destroyed most of San Francisco and left roughly 250,000 people homeless. City officials recorded about 478 deaths, a figure lo…

  — Simon Winchester, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906

• One of the OED's most prolific contributors wrote his entries from an asylum cell

  When James Murray asked the public to mail in quotations showing how English words were actually used, one of his most reliable contributors, Dr. William Chester Minor, sent in ten…

  — Simon Winchester, The Surgeon of Crowthorne

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