Word: algerian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...timing was inauspicious. Exactly nine years earlier, the Republic of Congo had been founded. Two years earlier, onetime Congo Premier Moise Tshombe had been skyjacked to Algiers during a holiday flight. Then, on the eve of the double anniversary, Tshombe, 49, was found dead by a servant. Eight Algerian physicians and three French doctors called in by the Algerian government concluded that he had died in his sleep. An autopsy later indicated natural death; the cause was not listed...
Prior to his death, according to his Algerian hosts (who played no part in his kidnaping by a French gunman), Tshombe had twice been treated for a heart condition. Tshombe spent his first year in Algeria in military barracks; during the second he was moved to more comfortable quarters. But like another prisoner, former Algerian President Ahmed ben Bella, Tshombe was often shifted from one isolated villa to another. The wary Algerians, who constantly suspected plots, moved him to thwart liberation attempts on the part of "foreign interests...
...enter even isolated restaurants. As the confinement lengthened, he began to suffer from melancholy, complained of missing his wife and ten children in Brussels. Presumably, he also missed the string of lissome white "secretaries" who had been among the coteries at his homes in exile in Madrid and Mallorca. Algerian President Houari Boumediene ignored a court ruling that Tshombe be extradited to the Congo, where he had long since been sentenced to death for treason...
There he waited twelve long years for France's next summons, and it came in 1958, when he was named Premier as France struggled in the frustration of the Algerian rebellion. In September of that year, De Gaulle's new constitution was approved by nearly 80% of French voters; it radically reshaped France's administration and gave the President vast new powers. He was elected President in the expectation that only he could find a peaceful solution in Algeria. He did, but in a way that outraged French settlers in Algeria and many Frenchmen at home...
...about 24% more payload with the same thrust than one fired at Cape Kennedy. Moreover, Guiana has a 120° stretch of open water north and east of it that is ideal for polar-orbit launchings. As a result, France, forced out of its former space station in the Algerian desert two years ago, is bringing French Guiana into the space age with a $102 million investment in launch pads and their support complexes...