Word: contraband
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Before the 130-odd ships that were the core of the Spanish Armada had been provisioned, searched for contraband women, and set creaking out of Lisbon harbor in May of 1588, one of the captains assessed the expedition's chances; unless a miracle occurred, the English could be expected to knock the Spanish to pieces. "So," he finished with heavy irony, "we are sailing against England in the hope of a miracle...
...inevitably a temptation to smugglers. Hong Kong, for example, makes no check of outgoing baggage. And India, with its stable rupee and a middle class that likes to convert its savings into solid-gold jewelry for safekeeping (and dowries), has been the world's best market for contraband gold for centuries...
...followed Pakistan's birth as a nation, Kassim and Abdullah Bhatti, sons of two fisherman brothers, built up a gold-smuggling empire so vast that prices on the Karachi bullion exchange fluctuated whenever the Bhattis brought in a shipment. Commanding a fleet of twelve ships that rendezvoused with contraband-carrying vessels in the Arabian Sea, and using new Chevrolets that easily outran customs officials' Jeeps on Pakistan's unpaved roads, the first cousins became rich men about town. Paunchy Kassim acquired a winning stable of 17 race horses and a taste for fading continental blondes. He also...
...sold his law books and car, recruited his brother Raul and 150-odd friends, raised $20,000 for guns and contraband army uniforms. At dawn on July 26. 1953, Fidel Castro led a column of 13 cars to the walls of Santiago's bristling Moncada barracks, a yellow stone pile where 1,000 Batista troops lay sleeping. A suspicious Jeep patrol came up. Castro, then 26, stepped out, raised his twelve-gauge shotgun and shot his first man. "That was the mistake," he recalls. "I had told them all to do what I did, and they all opened fire...
Tied to a balloon or bobbing down a canal in a bottle, the little magazine slips each month into Communist East Germany from the Western zone of Berlin. The cover of the contraband Tarantel (tarantula) proclaims that it is "priceless," but for East Germans caught chuckling over the magazine's sledgehammer humor, the price can be a term in a Red prison. Despite its problems of distribution and retribution, Tarantel is a big success among East Germans. Reason: the butt of humor for Tarantel is East Germany's Communist government...