Word: gapes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When he first read the letter from England last January, James N. Gape, 46, a valve company salesman and father of two children, let out a whoop of joy. His cousin's widow, Mrs. Sibyl Marion Geraldine Gape, had named him heir to an English estate that had been in the family for 500 years; it was worth, even at current rates, a tidy $270,000. There were two fine ancestral houses-Caxton Manor, with 16 rooms, 1,000 acres and three farms in Cambridgeshire; St. Michael's Manor, a 14-room, spacious-lawned house in Hertfordshire that...
...then Gape got to thinking. By the terms of the will, he would have to live in England. It would be tough to leave Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio; he might even lose his U.S. citizenship. There were some other jokers too. The death tax in England and other debts would take more than half the estate, leaving him but $112,000 and an income of around $5,000 a year. Income tax would chop off perhaps half of that. Upkeep would be expensive and the four servants hardly seemed enough. The biggest problem, thought Gape, was England itself: he was worried...
Last week, just a month before the deadline, James Gape was still trying to make up his mind. "We're very much on the fence," said he. "It's the children. Life is different in England. The system is different. The schools are different. It isn't easy to make that kind of decision...
...never seen before, Queen Victoria opened London's Great Exhibition, in the hope that its example might "unite the industry of all the nations of the earth." Britannia rode the crest of the wave. As cannons roared a royal salute, thousands of visitors thronged the Crystal Palace to gape at its wonders-the industrial triumphs of the steam age, as well as a champagne made from rhubarb, a knife with 300 blades, and the original Turkish towel (which so pleased Britain's Queen that she ordered six dozen...
...frescoes illustrating the great love story. A long-faced waiter, who obligingly changed his name from Mario to Romeo, served sentimental vacationists with specially prepared Scaloppe alla Giulietta e Romeo in the dining room. When supper was done, the tourists were led in awe to an upstairs bedroom to gape at Capulet relics that included, said the guides, the very bed in which Juliet had slept. Neither Vicenza nor the tourists cared in the slightest that Verona's tourist bureau stoutly denied the authenticity of both the castle...