D.Murali

Chennai, May. 13: After Columbus’s return from his first Atlantic crossing, there was ‘a tremendous jurisdictional dispute over newly discovered lands’ between Spain and Portugal, ‘the two most powerful maritime rivals in Europe’. Thus narrates Neil Armstrong in his foreword to ‘Longitude’ by Dava Sobel (www.oxfordbookstore.com). The dispute was settled when Pope Alexander VI ‘drew a meridian line from north to south on a chart of the great ocean, one hundred leagues west of the Azores’. All lands west of the line, discovered or undiscovered, were assigned to Spain, and all lands to the east, to Portugal. “It was masterful diplomacy, particularly when no one knew where the line fell.” Longitude problem was the thorniest in the eighteenth century, writes Sobel. “Lacking the ability to measure longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea.” A book that would introduce you to the hero, John Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker, who solved the problem.

Football fancies

Football started off in India ‘as a marker of unitary social identity and progressed as an emblem of nationalism’, write Boria Majumdar and Kausik Bandyopadhyay in ‘Goalless: The story of a unique footballing nation’. Soccer came to India with the East India Company, suggest available records. “One of the earliest football matches in the country was played in Calcutta in April 1854 between the ‘Calcutta Club of Civilians’ and the ‘Gentlemen of Barrackpore’. This match was followed by a hiatus of more than a decade…” India may rank 140 in the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) ratings, yet ‘Indian football ranks high in terms of its culture, tradition and mass following,’ note the authors. “What it requires to ‘take off’ is proper direction.” Will football succeed in usurping the ‘mass obsession’ repute from cricket?

More than mistakes

Are you aware that the popular saying, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ is in fact a misquotation? It is an alteration of the ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,’ a line in ‘An Essay on Criticism’ (1711) by Alexander Pope, informs ‘What They Didn’t Say,’ edited by Elizabeth Knowles. “The first use of ‘knowledge’ rather than ‘learning’ is found in the late 19th century, as in the following comment by the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley: ‘If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?’” Misquotations are much more than mistakes, says the intro. “From deliberate reworkings to unconscious changes, they show quotations on the move in our language.”

Some verbal slips can have a lasting impact, notes the intro. “‘Facts are stupid things’ (for ‘Facts are stubborn things’ by John Adams) was a momentary error of Ronald Reagan’s, instantly corrected, but it is still widely quoted and remembered.”

A book that shouldn’t end up being what you didn’t read!

D.Murali

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