Word: 1800s
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...phrase gerrymander, coined in the early 1800s to describe a salamander- shaped district engineered by Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, originally referred to an amphibian of convenience, the creature of whichever self-serving pol was carving up the turf. Such shenanigans have generally been deemed dubious because American democracy is based on the premise that legislators are elected to represent geographic regions and communities -- diverse constituencies that share sewer systems and schools and workplaces -- rather than a specific ethnic group, economic class or partisan faction. Circles and squares were fine; snakes and salamanders and inkblots tended to be perversions committed...
...1800s, Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), a mute Scottish woman, lands on the isolated New Zealand shore with her chatty young daughter (Anna Paquin) and her precious piano; the crated instrument perches on the bleak beach like an exotic bird, or like a coffin holding the happy life Ada left behind. Her mail-order husband (Sam Neill) trades the piano for land with the "town freak," George Baines (Harvey Keitel), and in another plaintive transaction Baines agrees to sell the piano back to Ada, one key at a time, for increasingly audacious amorous favors. This uncorseted Brontean plot runs the gauntlet...
Ever since Harvard's building boom in the early 1800s, red brick buildings have remained a symbol of old New England industrial Yankee charm...
...sure, historians say red brick is an authentic representation of Cambridge in the 1800s...
...with the last big revolution in education -- the imposition of universal public schooling in the mid-1800s -- this one will be driven by the Federal Government. The impetus will be political, social and economic. Such competitors as Japan and the European Community, which pour substantial resources into education, have already caught up with and surpassed the U.S. in the quality of their workers, and the trend will continue. In America a growing, uneducated, unemployable and mostly minority underclass will put increasing pressure on society to pay more than lip service to education...