Word: commoner
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...time, the century of mass suffrage but also the century of mass suffering. Ordinary people died in the trenches, in a deadly influenza epidemic, went hungry in the Great Depression, brought Adolf Hitler to power and died in the death camps. The Person of the Century should be the common man, the unsung hero who encompasses all our strivings and failings, our successes and disasters, our greatness and pettiness. He is us. ALBERT GOMPERTS Antwerp...
Caliphs in Cairo, Cordoba and Baghdad rend the unity of Islam, but not the prosperity. Gold from Nubia and the Caucasus is mined into dinars, the common currency from Spain to Lahore; and slaves from Asia, Europe and Africa labor in mines, cities, armies and harems from Cadiz to Samarkand. Meanwhile, Europe is still limping out of the Dark Ages...
...legitimate ruler lay in consummate imagemaking. She stage-managed her own personality cult. She dressed to kill, glittering with jewels in wondrous costumes to bedazzle her subjects. She went on royal progresses--the equivalent of photo-ops--to show off and get to know her people. She had the common touch, able to rouse a crowd or charm a citizen. She had flattering portraits painted and copies widely distributed. She encouraged balladeers to pen propagandistic songs. Her marvelous mythmaking machinery cultivated a mystic bond with the English people. "We all loved her," wrote her godson Sir John Harington...
...Churchill first, and then Roosevelt, who reawakened the West to its core values: freedom, civility, common decency in the face of evil, destructive forces of hate. The challenge that Hitler presented became the occasion for Churchill and Roosevelt and the lovers of freedom to battle the great diseases of the century: nihilism and defeatism. Churchill's apostles argue for him as the century's titan on these grounds. It was by no means obvious, in the dark days of 1940, that the Western Allies could prevail against the Axis. His optimism about victory and his conviction that there were truths...
...Thomas Paine His printed pamphlet Common Sense would inspire the Declaration of Independence; his American Crisis rallied Washington's troops at Valley Forge...