Word: bullion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ivory become a raw material for industry. In the 1920s thousands of elephants were butchered to meet U.S. demands for 60,000 ivory billiard balls a year and for hundreds of thousands of piano keys. In the 1970s ivory was a hedge against inflation, stockpiled and traded like bullion...
...44th voyage carrying passengers and gold from Panama to New York, the S.S. Central America ran into a killer hurricane and sank in 8,000 ft. of water 200 miles off the South Carolina coast. On board were an estimated 77,000 ounces of gold bullion worth at least $28 million today. Last week a salvage syndicate that located the wreck two years ago began recovering what engineer Thomas Thompson, 37, said was "like the classic sunken treasures you read about as a kid. It is like a garden of gold growing from the bottom and hanging from beams...
...millions, for example, from the country's cigarette-tobacco monopoly. But Seagrave estimates that the ex-dictator's fortune may be as much as $100 billion. Whence came that awesome wealth? Seagrave's answer is that Marcos had located and dug up part of a vast horde of stolen bullion known as "Yamashita's Gold...
According to the author's somewhat breathless account, when Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita ("the Tiger of Malaya") moved to Manila in 1944, he took charge of several billion dollars' worth of gold that the Japanese had accumulated in their conquest of Southeast Asia. The bullion was cached in underground caves dug by U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war, who were then buried alive with it. Seagrave claims that Marcos was able to disperse the gold with the aid of a murky global network of coconspirators, including Swiss banks, a London-based bullion cartel, right-wing American political groups (among them...
...them. It's goodbye to the pound, the ounce, the gill (4 fl. oz.) and the rod (a quarter of a chain). But the furlong will stay because it occurs only in sports, as will the troy ounce (31 g, vs. 28 g for the standard ounce) because gold-bullion operations couldn't survive without it. As for the pint, the measure of morning milk and evening ale for millions, London hopes the Community will agree that it just wouldn't be cricket to abolish...