Word: bladed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cold steel blade, sandwiched between two upright wooden shafts, is quietly carted into the prison's exercise yard before dawn. The convict is aroused at 5:30 and offered a cigarette and a glass of rum. Then, bound and blindfolded, he is strapped, face down, neck bared, to the shoulder-high plank. A switch trips and the heavy, razor-sharp blade falls...
...punishment. During the French Revolution hundreds of heads were lopped off, and the crowds came early to get a good view of such victims as Danton and Robespierre. In all, the guillotine was used some 4,600 times. Public executions were banned in 1939. In the past decade, the blade fell only six times, the most recent in Sept. 1977 when Hamida Djandoubi was dispatched for murder...
...surviving guillotines to a Paris museum, where, he predicts, "it is going to have the same attraction as the Mona Lisa." An avid collector of memorabilia involving the device, Badinter purchased the document signed by Louis XVI legalizing the guillotine for executions in 1791. The King died under the blade 18 months after approving its use. Reflects Badinter: "I don't think the machine gave him much satisfaction...
ZORRO, THE GAY BLADE...
...both alone in his cell. You 've slipped out a knife (eight-to ten-inch blade, double-edged). You're holding it beside your leg so he can't see it. The enemy is smiling and chattering away about something. He thinks you 're his fool; he trusts you. You see the spot. It's a target between the second and third button on his shirt. As you calmly talk and smile, you move your left foot to the side to step across his right-side body length. A light pivot toward him with your...