Word: fur
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Every year, when the star rose above the horizon just before dawn, the Romans paid bizarre tribute to it by sacrificing dogs with red fur. Seneca the Younger wrote that "the redness of the dog star is deeper, that of Mars milder." Ptolemy called it "reddish," a description also used by Cicero, Horace and other classical authors. The same hue was attributed to the star in cuneiform texts of Babylonia dating as far back...
...Revolution. “Bound by the conventional and the ordinary, he would revolt,” Zug writes. Having quickly spent his navy pay, the poor Ledyard wrote a popular memoir of his voyage with Cook in an effort to drum up support among potential donors for a fur-trading expedition. Ledyard stirred up an interested group, but corruption abounded and Ledyard was cut out of the loop. One of his partners fled the U.S. after embezzling $200,000 from his creditors...
...traveled to France, where his celebrity allowed him to befriend Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette, among others. He considered himself out of place among the rich and famous, since he was chronically short on money and always borrowing from his friends. Ledyard tried to set up a fur-trading mission again, this time with the help of the brash American naval hero, John Paul Jones. The plan met resistance from the major European powers, each of which was trying to corner the fur market for itself. His dreams dashed, Ledyard felt footloose...
...Ledyard set off across Siberia in a kibitka, a coach drawn by three horses. But he never received permission to travel through the country from Catherine the Great, and the empress signed an order for his arrest. She feared that Ledyard was really trying to spy on the Russian fur trade, and perhaps pass the information along to the British. Ledyard was rudely escorted out of Russia and his goal of circumambulating the world ended in disappointment...
...Ledyard set off across Siberia in a kibitka, a coach drawn by three horses. But he never received permission to travel through the country from Catherine the Great, and the empress signed an order for his arrest. She feared that Ledyard was really trying to spy on the Russian fur trade, and perhaps pass the information along to the British. Ledyard was rudely escorted out of Russia and his goal of circumambulating the world ended in disappointment...