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Pablo's Strad. Slonimsky, who was born in St. Petersburg on April 27, 1894 (according to unchecked information), does his sleuthing from a book-lined study on Boston's Beacon Street. He attributes his success as a detective to his refusal to trust authorities. But even Slonimsky can err. He "feels disgraced" by the fact that he reprinted the story that Queen Isabella II of Spain gave Violinist Pablo de Sarasate a Stradivarius when he was ten (actually, as Slonimsky later learned, Sarasate bought the Strad himself when he was 22). And Slonimsky's new dictionary contains another error of which he is still unaware: Rumanian Pianist Dinu Lipatti died of what his doctor called lympho-granulomatosis (Hodgkin's disease), not of rheumatoid arthritis.
* Named for its first compiler, U.S. Lexicographer and Editor Theodore Baker (1851-1934).