Word: alber
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...week's Science magazine, Dr. Alber Wolfson of Northwestern University advances his explanation: that they are led astray by the earth's fickle geology. According to a fairly well established theory, says Dr. Wolfson, the continents were once bunched together in two main masses: "Laurasia" (North America and Eurasia) and "Gondwana" (South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia), which were separated only by shallow seas (see map). During the Cretaceous period, 60 million years ago, both masses broke up and drifted slowly apart, their light granitic rocks floating on the heavy, plastic basalt that underlies both the oceans...
Swinging through Europe, on a hangman's holiday, which will take him to Vienna, Graz, northern Italy and (reportedly) to Nürnberg in time to officiate should Nazi leaders be hanged: Albert ("Yungg Alber"*) Pierrepoint, Britain's Senior Hangman. In Vienna, Pierrepoint will hang eight murderers and rapists, a refresher course for Austrian hangmen (conservative Austrian methods cause hanged men to struggle 20 minutes before dying; the progressive Pierrepoint system kills them almost at once). After his European tour, Hangman Pierrepoint plans to retire and to devote himself to his recently acquired Lancashire pub (name: "Help...
That was something for Albert ("Yungg Alber") Pierrepoint to ponder, when he joined his uncle Thomas as Britain's second Senior Hangman. He too had all the makings of an expert executioner-his job on "Lord Haw-Haw" had been first rate; but "Yungg Alber" was a ripe 37, had recently been married, and a hangman's income was inadequate. They did not hang many chaps in Britain...
...greengrocer's assistant at F. Harrison, Ltd. in Manchester, which he had held for 18 years. But, though it was steady enough, he dreamed of bigger things; once, when a reporter came to interview him at the greengrocery, he puckishly pretended that he was someone else, that "Alber" had moved away. Where? To a farm in Essex, said "Yungg Alber" wistfully...
Last week, he finally took a decisive step to better himself. He did not quite manage the farm in Essex, but he became the licensee of a pub in Oldham, Lancashire. "Yungg Alber" was a man of feeling; like his uncle, he always took pride in making his victim's grim death throes as light and brief as possible. His new pub had an appropriate name. It was called: "Help the Poor Struggler...