Word: caving
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Spelunking along the Spanish border early this summer, Scientist Georges Lépineux watched a black mountain crow fly into a yawning pit and disappear. Since crows love dark recesses almost as much as speleologists do, Amateur Geologist Lépineux rushed to investigate. A small cave led off the pit floor, and a few feet inside the cave mouth a limestone chimney dropped away into darkness. Cautiously, Lépineux heaved a rock into the opening, waited for the faint, faraway sounds of its fall. Then he rushed to report his discovery...
There were compensations. The Metropolitan's Soprano Astrid Varnay sang such a sumptuous Brünnhilde that she made up for her missing helmet. In Siegfried, the dragon Fafner, an immense 30-ft. creation, emerged from a gaping cave in front-center (instead of from a miserable little hole to one side, as at the conventional Met). Fafner was so terrible in his oversize plungings and snortings that, probably for the first time in history, Siegfried seemed really brave to tackle...
...fooled Franz von Papen in Palestine [during World War I], exposing himself to a chase by German cavalry and losing a saddlebag full of carefully prepared misleading information about General Allenby's plans. Meinertzhagen, moreover, is the only living European . . . who has entered the hallowed and mysterious cave of Machpelah* in the tomb of the patriarchs at Hebron...
...collection, or the intellectual brilliance of the Secretary of State. As you go from an important embassy to a well-known columnist's, to the Sulgrave Club and a chic Georgetown house, any Washingtonian will know in advance which Supreme Court, Cabinet and Senate couples might be encountered. Cave dwellers seem to prefer conservatives; high average I.Q.s, Jeffersonian Democrats...
...made-to-order ballad, The Death of Floyd Collins, did not appear until after Collins' 18-day ordeal ended. Sample line: "His body now lies sleeping in a lonely sandstone cave...