Word: elephantitis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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In ancient China, an occasional penalty was "death by the thousand cuts," the slow slicing away of bits of the body. A 19th century French traveler described an excruciating method in India during the rule of the rajahs: "The culprit, bound hand and foot, is fastened by a long cord...
Built by a consortium led by Henry Ford II, Ren Cen consists of a 73-story hotel and four 39-story office buildings. Since it opened in 1977, the center has lost $140 million, prompting the Detroit Free Press to call it "perhaps the country's largest white elephant...
Aside from export setbacks-prices for copper and cobalt dropped sharply-much of the loan money that flowed in was not spent wisely. Among Mobutu's development projects was a huge undertaking to dam the Zaïre River and to build a 1,100-mile-long power line...
Sex! Horror! Humor! Fairground Art (Abbeville; 312 pages; $85) offers 1,100 illustrations (700 in glorious color) of European and American carnival equipment and advertising, many of which deserve an exclamation mark. Authors Geoff Weedon and Richard Ward provide a pictorial history of their eye-catching subject, from the primitive...
Browsing in tall grass, or showering his parched hide in a cool river, the elephant moves with unhurried majesty. But for how long? In Elephants (Abrams; 255 pages; $50) Photographer Reinhard Künkel notes that during the 1970s a tenfold increase in the price of ivory, from $6 to...