| LIPOGRAMMATIST |
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As opposed to pangrammatists, who strive to crowd all the letters of the alphabet into a composition of the very briefest scope, a lipogrammatist systematically leaves one of them out. This ditty from the nineteenth century avoids a certain vowel: A jovial swain may rack his brain,
and tax his fancy’s might,
To quiz in vain, for ’tis most plain,
That what I say is right. A lipogram without an e is the most difficult kind to write, since that’s the most common letter in English. There have been some celebrated modern examples. In 1939 Ernest Vincent Wright published a 50,000-word novel called Gadsby without a single e in it. The French author Georges Perec produced a 300-page tour-de-force in 1969, similarly without an e in sight, under the title La Disparition. It was translated into e-less English by Gilbert Adair in 1995 as A Void. The word lipogram is from the Greek lipogrammatos, lacking a letter, which derives from the verb leipein, to leave out, plus gramma, a letter. The first part has nothing to do with the modern prefix lipo-, fat, which is from a different Greek stem |
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The Charge of the Light Brigade 
Half a league, half a league,
 Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred. Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred. Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred. |
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1945 - The American B-29 bomber, known as the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb on an inhabited area. The bomb named "Little Boy" was dropped over the center of Hiroshima, Japan. An estimated 140,000 people were killed. 
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than have to go around the Canteen looking like this..... 
