The OED asks for help

The image above shows the Oxford English Dictionary's first editor Sir James Murray in the Old Scriptorium during the compilation of the first edition c. 1900. From the time creation of the OED began in 1857, the editors have appealed to the public for help in collecting citations for words from periodicals, pamphlets, works of literature, and scientific and philosophical treatises. As described in the interesting book The Professor and the Madman, obsessive American surgeon Dr. William Chester Minor sent in thousands of carefully handwritten quotations over the years. As part of the dictionary's first comprehensive revision since that first edition, a team of bibliographers led by Veronica Hurst checks every citation for for accuracy. Hurst recently found that a book entitled The Meanderings of Memory is quoted as the first source (1852) for the appearance of 49 words, including the verbs "chapelled" and "revirginize" - but can't be found in any catalogs or databases. The OED is hoping that a librarian or lexicographical sleuth will help them locate the obscure work, which may have been self-published and narrowly distributed. Katherine Connor Martin, head of U.S. dictionaries for Oxford University Press, remarks. “We like to say the OED has been crowdsourcing since before there was a word for crowdsourcing."

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The island that isn't

When the whaler Velocity returned from a voyage in the Pacific in 1876, the ship's master reported the sighting of some "Sandy Islets," which were included 3 years later in an Australian maritime directory. Said to extend north and south "along the meridian 159º 57' E" and "between lat 19º 7' S and 19º 20' S," Sandy Island became established when it was charted near New Caledonia on a 1908 British Admiralty chart (IMAGE ABOVE), though later charts from the U.K. Hydrographic Office attached the internationally recognized abbreviation "ED" (existence doubtful). Although France removed it from its maps, Sandy Island persisted in global databases after geographic information was digitized. The phantom island – now believed to have been a floating raft of pumice or a cartographer's trick to trap copyright violators – has now been officially "undiscovered." In 2012, researchers aboard the Australian national research vessel RV Southern Surveyor spent 25 days mapping the sea floor and collecting rock samples to understand the tectonic evolution of that corner of the Pacific. Maria Seton of the University of Sydney and her colleagues noticed some discrepancies on their charts and decided to test the existence of the landmass reported to be the size of Manhattan. Steven Micklethwaite of the University of Western Australia recalls, "We all had a good giggle at Google as we sailed through the island."

 

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Unsavory ivory

Without the company of women for months at a time, 19th c. North American whalers applied their frustration and imagination to the production of scrimshaw, the carving of whale ivory (teeth and bones). Two dozen of these carvings, featuring nudity and sexually explicit images, have gone on display at the Vancouver Maritime Museum as part of a new exhibit entitled "The Tattoos & Scrimshaw: The Art of the Sailor." Executive director Simon Robinson explains, “It’s an opportunity for us to show some diversity in our collection, which is rich.... The erotica is part of the craft.” They did not intend to provoke, but the mother of two toddlers has made headlines by voicing her strong objections, so museum staff have added a parental advisory to the exhibit - though they have no intention of censoring history. Other visitors, like Dave Hutchinson who was accompanied by his 13-year-old son from Victoria, are less concerned. “You can tell what they were thinking of when out at sea for two years. They didn’t have the Internet back then."

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