Word: 1890s
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Since the 1890s, the Salvation Army has made a Christmas tradition of collecting money for the needy. But the Army's shiny red kettles and bell- ringing workers are growing scarcer on the West Coast. Fearful that the bell ringers will set a precedent for other solicitors, up to half the shopping malls in California and Nevada have barred them. In protest, parishioners from nearly 100 churches in the Bay Area are boycotting some of the malls. A few owners have relented and allowed the kettles near the entrance of their stores. Nevertheless, since the kettles collect an average...
Remember Madame Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical Society and revealed the secrets of the universe in Isis Unveiled. There were sightings of spaceships in the 1890s, at a time when no American had ever seen an airplane, much less an Apollo rocket, but then as now a century was coming to an end. Mars was once widely believed to be inhabited by little green men, so when Orson Welles declared on the radio in 1938 that space invaders had landed, much of the nation went into a panic. And do not forget The Search for Bridey Murphy...
Still, as far back as the late 1890s, Swedish Chemist Svante Arrhenius had begun to fret that the massive burning of coal during the Industrial Revolution, which pumped unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, might be too much of a good thing. Arrhenius made the startling prediction that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would eventually lead to a 9 degrees F warming of the globe. Conversely, he suggested, glacial periods might be caused by diminished levels of the gas. His contemporaries scoffed. Arrhenius, however, was exactly right. In his time, the CO2 concentration was about 280 to 290 parts...
...prospect of pistol-packing hordes at shopping malls, sporting events and even Disney World has inspired a movement to tighten the loophole before it takes effect. "We want to bring Florida into the 1990s, not the 1890s," says State Attorney General Robert Butterworth, who is spearheading the effort. He has asked Governor Bob Martinez to consider an amendment to the bill during a special legislative session this week. But the Governor has decided to keep the gun bill off the agenda, and it is unlikely legislators will vote to change their handiwork during the regular legislative session in November...
...Gallery of the Louvre to a good Eakins, a vigorous Mary Cassatt of boaters feeding ducks, and a set of admirable monotypes by Maurice Prendergast. There is also some very minor work by famous names (Homer, Martin Johnson Heade, John Frederick Kensett) and a plethora of those 1890s contre-jour pictures of nice Boston girls in flowing chiffon scarves -- genteel provincial salon painting that has been revived as a market craze for investors now that the supply of Childe Hassams and the like is running...