Catching up

5/9 Lewis Nkosi died (2010)  [South African writer]
6/9 First Puritans leave Plymouth on the _Mayflower_ (1620)
- One of the first English-speaking settlements in North America.
- Crystal explains the r-dropping of (eastern) New England speech from the fact that most of the settlers originated from London  and other eastern areas. I wonder if there is local evidence of this?
I was under the impression that evidence for the change first appears in London in the late 18th century, and had spread from there to other parts of England and to the colonies.
7/9 I.A.Richards died (1979) [author, with C.K.Ogden, of _The Meaning of Meaning_ (1923), which is about semantics. Crystal also mentions an essay appended to this book by Bronislaw Malinowski, "The problem of meaning in primitive languages".
8/9 International Literacy Day
9/9 First reported case of a computer bug (1947)
- A story (credited to "computer pioneer Grace Hopper") of how a moth became stuck in a relay of the Mark II computer at Harvard. "It was extracted and can still be seen - stuck into the logbook for the day..."
But no, just a bit of Harvardian wit, since we have:
"Mr Edison...had been up the two previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph -- an expression for solving a difficulty..."
- Pall Mall Gazette, 1889
10/9 Mary Wollstonecraft died (1797)
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
etc.
11/9 Hannah Weiner died (1997)
American poet (born 1928), associated with the "Language Poets" and their journal, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, which always came up in library catalogues when I was searching for plain old "Language", journal of the Linguistic Society of America. Another name is Charles Bernstein.
Early work using naval flag signals..."idiosyncratic style...schizophrenic condition"...