Word: greats
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...learn that Pythagoras, the father of mathematical proof, was a vegetarian who would not eat beans because they reminded him of gonads. Legend has it that when his mathematical enemies set his house ablaze and chased the fire-fleeing Pythagoras to the edge of a bean field, the great mathematician declared that he would rather die than mingle with the beans. His pursuers happily slit his throat...
...lean, ramrod-straight bearing that manages to both poke fun at itself and radiate real stage charisma. This new Kiss Me, Kate (Broadway's first since the 1948 original), smashingly directed by Michael Blakemore and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, proves what Ragtime should have: Mitchell is Broadway's first great musical star of the new millennium...
Just take the great martial powers of modern times: the U.S., the Soviet Union, Germany, Britain, Japan, China and Israel. The age of America's expansion in the 19th century was marked by the low-tech coffeepot that was left on the fire until the brew inside had thickened into a blackish acid just right for tanning buffalo hides...
...stopped once and for all at the gates of Vienna. But now it was the Habsburgs' turn. Retreating, the Turks left their coffee sacks behind, and the Austrians took to mocha with the same passion they later devoted to waltzing along the Danube. In Austria's legendary coffeehouses, a great culture grew--from Mozart (who, alas, did not write the Coffee Cantata; that was Bach) to Kafka and Freud. The Habsburg empire was, however, doomed, battered by the French in the 18th century and trounced by the chicory-gulping Prussians in the 19th century...
...great empires thus falter was explained by a 16th century Arab physician. Imbibe the brew, he warned, and "the body becomes a mere shadow of its former self. The heart and the guts are so weakened..." Or, in modern parlance, you polish either your gold-plated Melior or your M-16. You can't launch a Hellfire missile with a frappuccino in hand. Pleasure trumps prowess...