Word: devours
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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William Jennings Bryan once called him "Mexico's Sir Galahad." Yet Hollywood portrayed him as a cruel, simple-minded bandit who poured honey on his prisoners for the delight of watching the ants devour them. His widow denied stories of his atrocities, said in his defense that "If he didn't like you, he'd just pull out his gun and shoot...
...tossed from the boat was devoured by a school of piranhas in 15 minutes. When the local people wish to drive cattle across these rivers, they sacrifice the oldest cow, driving it into the river first as bait. While the attention of the piranhas is focused on consuming that animal, the rest of the cattle cross in relative safety a few feet upstream. It is not difficult to see how, given the proper opportunity, a school of piranhas could devour a human being...
...alarming to newly affluent Americans is the high cost of dying with a will. For good reasons, a will must be proved valid (probated) in state courts known variously as probate, surrogate, orphans or chancery. Unfortunately, many such courts' archaic methods can tie up an estate for years, devour 20% or more of its value in legal fees-and force the dead to subsidize politicians in one of U.S. law's darkest scandals...
...basic metabolic rate, but only for a brief period; any old insect can raise the rate to 50, and keep it up for hours. It is no trick at all for a large African grasshopper to catch and kill a mouse, and giant water bugs commonly capture and devour small snakes. Almost any beetle can lift 850 times its own weight; to do as much, a man would have to lift 62 tons. And the common flea, which measures one-tenth of an inch, can jump twelve inches, or 120 times its own length; to do as much...
Cracking the Cranium. The idea behind the newest games seems to be: Make them impossible, or at least interminable. Strategy games such as Diplomacy (TIME, Dec. 13, 1963) often drag on for eight hours, can devour a whole weekend. War games, notably Avalon Hill's Waterloo, Stalingrad and Gettysburg, allow a player to second-guess Napoleon, Hitler or Lee, and, if successful, reverse the course of history...