April 14

As hard as it may be to believe there are still a few people who rely on actual dictionaries to check their spelling or more rarely, look up a word’s definition. Most people seem to rely, instead, on Bill Gates’ spell-check. If you actually have a dictionary and know how to use it, pause for a moment on the 14th and offer a word of thanks to Noah Webster, who, on that date in 1828, copyrighted his first dictionary.

In 1774, when he was 16, Webster entered Yale College. He earned a law degree in 1781. In 1793, Alexander Hamilton gave him $1500 to move to New York and edit a newspaper, which Hamilton had started to use as a propaganda machine for the Federalists.
Webster was a little slow out of the gate however because on the 15th in 1755, Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London, England.