Word: castor
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...surviving comic strips that are really meant to be funny is Segar's Thimble Theatre, starring Popeye. Thimble Theatre's first cast consisted of gawky Heroine Olive Oyl and her dimwit brother Castor. They straggled along for ten years before Castor Oyl one day in 1929 encountered Popeye on a dock. Cried Castor: "Hey, are you a sailor?" Said Popeye dourly: "Ja think I was a cowboy...
...stars travel alone, like the sun. Many are paired, the two members revolving around each other like the ends of a spinning dumbbell. Such bright stars as Capella, Spica, Castor, Mizar (a Big Dipper star) and Algol (the "Demon Star") are binaries (doubles). Some stars occur in groups of more than two. Astronomers estimate that one-fourth or more of all the stars in the sky are doubles or multiples. Last week astronomers heard of a pair of stellar Siamese twins...
...well remember Balbo's flashing eyes, his bold gallantry, his gladiator physique. He had come a long way, in the social graces, from the fearless ruffian who helped D'Annunzio occupy Fiume and, after Mussolini took Rome, became chief of the Fascist militia, reputed inventor of the castor-oil treatment for obdurate opponents too important to be clubbed or assassinated. When Mussolini let him be Under Secretary for Air in 1926, he modernized Italy's Air Corps, developed mass-formation flying. For the Chicago flight, Mussolini made him Italy's only Air Marshal...
...Castor oil used to be of little use in paint and varnish making because it was sticky and slow to dry. In recent years chemists have found that they could "dehydrate" castor oil (remove some of the chemical components in the form of water), leaving a pale oil which dries to a firm film, keeps its pale color even after long exposure. Experiments under way in Texas show that castor plants can be successfully grown...
Infra-red radiation tests show that dehydrated castor oil is a close chemical neighbor of tung oil, and, like tung oil, it yields a desirable, minutely wrinkled film when it dries. Some tung is produced in the U. S., but the vast bulk is still imported from the troubled Orient. Chemist John Carl Weaver of Sherwin-Williams Co. declared last week that dehydrated castor oil should help relieve the U. S. of dependence on foreign supplies not only of tung oil but of perilla and linseed oils as well...