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Edith (Wilson) responded to World War I with a patriot's heart. She clamped down on the family finances, oversaw a strict cutback in White House expenditures, and even bought sheep for the mansion's lawn whose wool was auctioned on behalf of the Red Cross. She even made sure her husband...got enough rest and relaxation ( a billiard table was installed for his diversion).

Remaining a cautious distance from his prey, Launders had given the order to fire in a level tone. That was something his men would always remember about him: Launders never shouted his commands, but spoke them calmly, without raising his voice.
As the warhead blasted a hole in the ship..., the German guard boats had raced off in the direction of the British sub to retaliate.

I was willing to believe that total openness wasn't the opposite of safety but the only true guarantee of finding it. So late that summer evening, Kate and I sat on the bed, gazing into one another's eyes, and we gave each other total access.

By then most everyone had heard of the Dark City. It was there on the horizon...It was common knowledge you could travel to the city spend a few hours, days even, among its pleasure domes and massage parlors.
from "Children of the New World"

Emilio was like a jewel in a beautiful setting. He almost sparkled against the expensive furniture, his hair artfully slicked back, looking a bit like David Janssen in "The Fugitive." Only Emilio was much more handsome.

On December 10th (1989), a government of national understanding was formed and effectively took power...On 29th December 1989, the transformed National Assembly elected Vaclav Havel as president...

The beginnings of the independent Czechoslovak state were influenced by liberal democratic ideals originally derived from the legacy of the French and American revolutions. On 14th November 1918 the National Committee declared itself to be a Revolutionary National Assembly which had deposed the Habsburg dynasty from the Czech throne, and proclaimed the new state a republic.

With the spread of his name and fame, Jack's home in Piedmont became an intellectual center of the Bay area. No less than a hundred people a week walked through his front door, enjoyed his hospitality. Even with two servants, and Mammy Jenny to care for the children, there was a great deal of work to be done. Bessie was not always in the mood for more and more company...

He was standing quietly on one foot and looking, like an expert rifleman, down the end of a bill as deadly as an assassin's dagger. I had seen, not long before, a man with his brow split open by a half-grown heron which he had been rash enough to try and capture...
The bird I faced was perfectly mature and had come softly down on a frog hunt while I slept. Why was he standing over me?

Who was Pikes? Only the greatest of them all! Pikes, the man of ten thousand faces....! Better than Lon Chaney, the father!...Yes, better than Chaney. Better than that other ancient mummer? What was his name? Karloff? Far better! Lugosi? The comparison was odious! No, there was only one Pikes...

The people had been literate, for there were rows of books upon the shelves; but books went to dust when they were touched, and one could do no more than wonder at the magic words they held.
---- from "...And the Truth Shall Make You Free" by Clifford D. Simak

In the end, the scientist who invented the oxygen destroyer uses it to defeat Godzilla, committing suicide in the process so that no one else can ever use his creation. The nobility and heroism of his sacrifice was diminished somewhat by the fact that Godzilla became a franchise, rising again and again to menace Japan ( and later to defend it from other giant monsters).

The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was -94 degrees F. in Siberia.
Ten per cent of the salt mined in the world each year is used to de-ice the roads in America.
Dirty snow melts quicker than clean snow.

As a little girl in England in the 1930s, Jane Goodall loved animals. When she was just a year old, her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee in honor of the baby chimp born at the London Zoo... Jane loved it.

"Want to hear my new song?" he asked.
"Yessuh."
He cleared his throat and sang:
I wish I was in da land o' cotton,
Old times dare are not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.

Hunkering around the tiny pond, we gazed into its dark depths, detecting wavering weeds and tiny silver minnows...
We gasped when we spotted her-- the Maiden sleeping at the bottom of the pool, pale as a ghost salamander...

The Kulles first stayed....in Forest Park, a white working-class suburb a few miles west of Chicago. Much of the land that became Forest Park had been purchased shortly before the Civil War by Ferdinand Haase, a German immigrant; and the village's first major businesses were Waldheim German Cemetery, the Frauenverein des Deutschen Altenheims ( Women's Society of the German Old People's Home)....

... the proliferation of monks and hermits and nuns , whatever their moral influence for good, tended to splinter a profoundly divided society still further...So the assertion of Alexander Pope that "the monks finished what the Goths began" contains a measure of truth. They had dropped out of the world, because they found society more than they could endure.

... Valentinian (I) himself was a poor advertisement for judicial balance. For even if we do not believe Ammianus' assurance that he fed victims to pet bears, he was evidently liable to terrible fits of anger, one of which caused his death. And the ferocity with which he ordered summary executions was notorious.

"...It's manna. Manna, Mr. Lomax."
"Manna? That I don't get."
...."Like the Lord sent down to the Israelites, Mr. Lomax. The manna in the desert. That kind of manna." He was continuing to eat while he talked. "It sure has a heavenly taste, and it came right down out of the sky."
----"Manna" by John Christopher

"Saturday, the twelfth of June, 2064. Well, the deed is done. I'm a man, I guess. It's a lot more complicated than I imagined , but I can't exactly go back now..."

Hannibal had the battlefield ( at Lake Trasimene) searched for the Roman commander's body to give him an honorable burial, but no one could find it. The Insubres were one of the Gallic tribes that kept their enemies' heads as trophies. It is possible that Flaminius's body was stripped of its armor and his head cut off, later to hang from the belt of the Gaul who had killed him.

...his ( Hannibal's) army had an overland route from Spain to Italy that made the cumbersome and expensive task of mounting an invasion by sea unnecessary. Moreover, the harsh terrain over which the route rambled would make it difficult for the Romans to intercept and stop his progress.

I returned to my room, sat in my chair by the window, and tried to rejoin Frodo and Sam on the road to Mount Doom. I couldn't do it. I closed the book and stared out through the rain-wavery glass at the empty beach and the gray ocean beyond.

Truman then moved to the central message of his speech...: "I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." This sentence, one of the most sweeping and consequential in the era in which it was delivered by an American president, was greeted with silence.

....the Neanderthals were extremely varied and widely dispersed. They had an elaborate culture...They were more muscular, more barrel-chested, and shorter than modern humans, but if they cleaned up, shaved, and dressed in business suits, they could probably pass for television evangelists.

Imam Yutubi was very clear. Those who are against God have no right to live. We have the right to end them.
But most people on Earth do not follow your God. If they are for other gods, or no god, do you have the right to end them too? Two billion people following your God. Six billion others. What do you think about them?
It depends.
On what?
On how they behave.

....U.S. policy makers were wise to oppose the spread of totalitarian communism, and to hope that this fundamentally flawed form of social organization, once contained, would eventually die out and be replaced by political and economic institutions that permitted the free flowering of human potential.

What stood out for him ( William Russell of The London Times ) was Lincoln's face. "....... the eyes dark, full, and deeply set, are penetrating, but full of an expression which almost amounts to tenderness."

....he ( Emperor Nero) never lost the affection of the populace and was respected in the provinces...He accepted and discharged the then traditional basic duties of an Emperor to provide bread, water, and circuses... In his foreign policy Nero was effective, choosing governors and procurators wisely...