Word: freaked
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Breaking Point. The shortages are caused by a combination of Russia's capricious climate and the country's inefficient system of production and distribution. In 1971-72, European Russia was bedeviled by a freak winter, when little snow fell to insulate seeds against record spells of frost. This was followed by a drought during the hottest summer of the century. The resulting crop damage and late harvest taxed the Soviets' inadequate technology to the breaking point. Trucks, harvesting machinery, railroad cars, granaries and manpower all seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...
...would be difficult to find two teams more different in mode, mood and deed than the Oakland Athletics and the Cincinnati Reds. Oakland, champion of the weak-sister American League, had come to be thought of as Finley's Freak Show, after Owner Charles O. Finley. They adorned themselves with flowing manes, mustaches and green-and-gold uniforms reminiscent of the Gay Nineties. The players feuded among themselves sporadically and with Manager Dick Williams constantly. They just barely won the pennant in the American League, struggling through five tough games to defeat the Detroit Tigers, who have grown considerably...
...wear mime makeup and practice ersatz Marcel Marceau. Others appear in full drag-flowing scarves, high-heeled wedgies, false eyelashes, mascara, lipstick and cheek-clinging glitter. With the revolt long since gone out of the music, what is left is really a new kind of vaudeville or sometimes a freak show-occasionally first-rate, frequently diverting, but too often merely repulsive. Items...
...with his armless hands growing directly out of his shoulders, and he is known, in the cruel world of the carnival, as "Sealo the Sealboy." Norbert P. Terhune is a dwarf, 3 ft. 6 in. tall, billed as "Poo-Bah the Pygmy." Both of them worked for World Fair Freaks and Attractions, a sideshow that toured various Southern county fairs. In the summer of 1969 World Fair was preparing to open in North Bay Village, near Miami, when the local police threatened to prosecute under a 1921 state law against freak shows, which calls...
...Freak shows have been in a long decline-there are only five such shows of any size left-but a number of states still have laws designed to protect citizens from displays of deformity and to protect the deformed themselves from exploitation. Berent and Terhune were not grateful. Along with World Fair, they went to the Florida Supreme Court to argue that the state was interfering with their right to make a living; neither, despite their normal intelligence, had been able to find any other job. By a 6-to-1 vote, the court found: "It may be that certain...