Word: direful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...household. The scene is French Guiana, a region where on Christmas Day the temperature graciously drops to 104°, and where convicts can not only hire out but apparently never have to report back. The Messrs. Fixit of My 3 Angels are employed as roofers by a family in dire danger of having no roof over their heads: on the way from France is a snarling cousin, to oust papa from the business he has botched. Along with the cousin is his coldblooded nephew, who is jilting papa's daughter for an heiress...
Since the day it was founded 39 years ago, the left-of-center New Republic has lost money. But this never meant dire financial danger to the magazine. Started by the late Willard Straight and his wife Dorothy, who had inherited millions from her father William C. Whitney, the magazine could always rely on a trust fund which she set up. Last week Editor Michael Straight, 36, son of the founders, announced a radical change. The trustees, in "the interests of beneficiaries who are minors," will no longer put money into the New Republic (circ. 36,000). Hence forth...
...found what is probably the first authentic bone of Folsom Man, a mysterious race of hunters who lived 10,000 years ago. Shay went bone-hunting with Jerry Ainsworth, a student at Eastern New Mexico College. Near a small stream called Blackwater Draw, they found the skeleton of a "dire wolf," a husky, toothy, carnivorous beast that died out toward the end of the glacial period...
...Dire wolves are respectable finds for any amateur digger, but among the bones of this one was something even choicer: a stone spearhead with oddly fluted sides. It proved that the dire wolf had been speared and possibly killed by a Folsom hunter. It also hinted that other Folsom remains might be found near by. In Pleistocene times Blackwater Draw must have been a sizable river, just the place for ancient hunters to use as a camp site...
...sorting mail. Postmaster Shay kept digging systematically near Blackwater Draw. At last he found what looked like a human bone. He took it to Archaeologist Frank Hibben of the University of New Mexico, who identified it as a human rib. Since it came from the same stratum as the dire wolf that had tangled with a Folsom hunter. Dr. Hibben believes that it is a Folsom bone, the first ever found. He hopes that further digging will turn up the rest of the skeleton. Then science will get a real look at shadowy Folsom Man, who has been known thus...