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During the years between 1910 and 1920, the black populations doubled in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and Cleveland... Fifty thousand southern blacks settled in Chicago alone between 1916 and 1919, and an additional 120,000 African Americans settled in the city during the 1920s.

A typical Irish town consists of several buildings, one of which is always a bar, called a "pub." Next to this there will typically be another pub, which is adjacent to several more pubs...

I watched the Big People. What is it like to move about the world, to travel, free of the fears of the tiny: the fear of being crushed by all the big things Big People make and use?
---"They Tell Me You Are Big" by Todd McEwen

....Asoka, in the words of one scholar, "was attempting to reform the narrow attitude of religious teaching to protect the weak against the strong, and to promote throughout the empire a consciousness of social behavior so broad in its scope that no cultural group could object to it."

In the middle of the night I ask myself:
what will happen to Chile,
what will become of my poor dark homeland?
----------------- Pablo Neruda
"Insomnia"

When a reporter from "The Detroit News" showed up at Nazi Party headquarters in December 1931 to interview Hitler...., she was surprised to find, hanging on the wall behind Hitler's desk, a large, framed portrait of America's most famous antisemite. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler explained...
The reporter asked Hitler...why he was antisemitic.
"Somebody has to be blamed for our troubles,"..

"...I am always wary of revenge as a motivation for men and women to alert us to possible heresies. I fear some in the past have been burned for the wrong reasons... But as the Dominican Order has declared, it is better to burn one hundred innocents than leave one heretic left standing to corrupt God's faithful."

No guard spared a second glance for the skinny, bearded, dirty old beggar; there were a thousand in Camorr just like him, a thousand interchangeable losers,, hopeless and penniless...

Yet so far as anyone knew, the Gentlemen Bastards were an unassuming gang of ordinary sneak thieves; competent and discreet enough, steady earners, but hardly shooting stars..

After his departure from Paris on 7 October (1870), Gambetta had had an eventful flight. The balloon sailed over the Prussian lines at less than 2,000 feet, its occupants watching nervously while enemy riflemen below took pot shots at them.

Omisha is panting, her breath heavy and hot on my face. This is enough...Then she bares her teeth.

In the Western world, with its affluence, a great fear, a strong feeling of emptiness and pointlessness, often hides beneath the beautiful surface of the "good life," because the people take the material world too seriously. Those who succumb to the illusion that they can buy the meaning of life grow unhappy.

At Chengtu, ...the ( Chinese) government announced a dramatic decision: A new capital would be established at Taipei on the island of Taiwan, a former Japanese colony known to Westerners as Formosa, 100 miles from the mainland.

Brigadier General James Gavin, the thirty-seven-year-old assistant commander of the 82nd "All American" Airborne Division, had been handed a tough nut to crack--forcing a crossing over the Merderet River eight miles west of Utah Beach in Normandy. Gavin's men were to spearhead the full-scale attack by Major General J. Lawton Collins' U.S. VII Corps westward across the Cotentin Peninsula. The VII Corps was to rea

The bees did speak to him, after a fashion. The featureless drone, the sonic blank that others heard was to him a shifting narrative, rich, inflected, variable, and distinct...and he moved along the sound, tending to his hives...stooped and marveling.

The wooden doors creaked open and a middle-aged man in jeans introduced himself as the curator. He was pale-skinned, with an owlish face adorned by thick-rimmed glasses. His hair was tousled, his eyes tired, probably the effects of being woken from a sound sleep.

The Rough Riders' surgeons initially said it was okay to eat the mangoes but then changed their minds, believing that the plentiful fruit might serve as a carrier for yellow fever ( the discovery that mosquitos transmitted the yellow fever would not occur for another two years). By then, many troopers had already become addicted... and were willing to risk it.

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.