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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.

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..."