Word: almanack
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Lunatic Expert. Chosen to compile the book were Norris and Ross McWhirter, twin grandsons of Scottish Inventor William McWhirter, who built the first in dicating voltmeter and ammeter. At ten, the twins' favorite reading was Whitaker's Almanack; in the ensuing 26 years, they have added to their fund of statistics at Maryborough and Oxford, and as newsmen in London. In a scant 16 weeks, the McWhirters finished the book, and in the process they found an alibi for Sir Hugh: some game birds, they discovered, fly at a hard-to-hit 72 m.p.h...
...interests of a man who tried to take all knowledge for his province, and sometimes all provinces (especially Pennsylvania) for his knowledge. The volume covers the 5½ years between 1745 and mid-17 50, and proceeds by remorseless chronology from the 13th edition of Poor Richard's Almanack (next to the Bible, the bestseller of the day) until a year or so before Franklin got to fly that famous kite in the thunderstorm. Those who like to smile with superior historical hindsight can do so on page 374 with the realization that Franklin was getting warm on lightning...
Navymen around the world await the annual edition of Jane's Fighting Ships as eagerly as European aristocrats used to await the Almanack de Gotha. Since 1897, Jane's, published in London close to the British Admiralty, has been the unofficial but authoritative best word on the relative strength and precedence of all the navies of the world...