Word: fitful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...eastern highlands of New Guinea, sudden bursts of maniacal laughter shrilled through the walls of many a circular, windowless grass hut, echoing through the surrounding jungle. Sometimes, instead of the roaring laughter, there might be a fit of giggling. When a tribesman looked into such a hut, he saw no cause for merriment. The laugher was lying ill, exhausted by his guffaws, his face now an expressionless mask. He had no idea that he had laughed, let alone why. New Guinea's Fore (pronounced foray) tribe was afflicted by a deadly foe. It was kuru, the laughing death...
...students also get low grades on occasion, but they are less likely to be scared than to be contemptuous of the grader who has failed to appreciate them. The reason is apparently that the Exeter student is unawed by Harvard, and really does not believe that the grader is fit to pass judgment...
...paid a day in jail for them. Abe ("Kid Twist") Reles sang about Murder Inc., in 1940, but Reles, though locked in a Coney Island hotel room and guarded by cops, somehow managed to fall out the window and kill himself before Brooklyn Prosecutor Bill O'Dwyer saw fit to bring Al to trial Al disappeared and joined the Army (he trained soldiers as longshoremen during the war), and for "clerical reasons," the "wanted" card with Al's name was removed from the files of the New York Police Department...
...were destined to fit together like 4th and July, but they got off to a strange start when Ross hired Thurber as his managing editor. ("In those days," explained Thurber last week, "you started at the top and worked your way down.") Ross affected to despise writers; Thurber wanted only to write. "He wanted, first of all, to know how old I was, and when I told him it set him off on a lecture. 'Men don't mature in this country, Thurber,' he said. 'They're children. I was editor of the Stars...
John Beck's sets are extraordinarily fine. Light, simple shapes of window and door frames, as well as modern furniture, fit the spirit of an architect's house exactly...