the professor and the madman...

so i finally started to read the professor and the madman yesterday. i got about halfway through the book last night before retiring for the evening. it's quite the interesting story. i'll give you the basic story... the oxford english dictionary was compiled over the course of seventy years with the help of many submitters/contributors. one of those contributors was a united states civil war veteran, doctor william chester minor. minor went to england in an attempt to cure his insanity, and ended up killing a man with his service revolver one evening. the court found him innocent by reason of insanity and sent him to broadmoor mental asylum in rural england. it was during his residence there that he sent in thousands of defining entries still included in the OED. fascinating, eh?