Word: grimness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...appearing in New York, Houston and Los Angeles: Santa Muerte. The personage is Mexico's idolatrous form of the Grim Reaper: a skeleton - sometimes male, sometimes female - covered in a white, black or red cape, carrying a scythe, or a globe. For decades, thousands in some of Mexico's poorest neighborhoods have prayed to Santa Muerte for life-saving miracles. Or death to enemies. Mexican authorities have linked Santa Muerte's devotees to prostitution, drugs, kidnappings and homicides. The country's Catholic church has deemed Santa Muerte's followers devil-worshiping cultists. Now Santa Muerte has followed the thousands...
...Spain, they're cutting down vast forests in order to build the Armada, with which they intend to impose that country's grim Catholic will on Protestant England. In a glum castle, Mary Queen of Scots schemes to replace her cousin Elizabeth on the English throne - if, of course, she can avoid the death sentence everyone is urging the Virgin Queen to impose on her. In Whitehall, Walter Raleigh is spreading his coat over the mythical puddle so his sovereign will not dampen her dainty feet as she strolls toward her distinguished destiny. Meantime, spies and assassins scuttle through...
...exploits as an Air Force pilot in the Pacific during World War II included 219 combat missions; he counted among his myriad awards an honorary title from the Queen of England. But Major General John (Jock) Henebry was best known as a member of the Grim Reapers, an élite group who mastered a dangerous but accurate technique called "skip bombing" that required flying low enough to make bombs skip along the surface of the water before hitting a ship. Among the missions he led: a bloody assault on the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul, New Britain Island, that became...
...this grim economic news represents Sarkozy's return to hard reality, where essentials won't turn around and pick up with a rousing performance or deft spin of events," says Dominique Reynié, a political analyst at the Foundation of Political Sciences in Paris. "His initial successes involved passing tougher immigration law, opening up cabinet posts to leftist politicians, raising France's profile in international affairs - all things that produce big headlines, but whose real impact are hard to measure. And with economic worries now overtaking that earlier buzz, I think it's fair to say Sarkozy has failed...
...grim economic, political and social realties of a changing Nicaragua has prompted some to cash in their family's last chips, selling their homes in a hot real estate market and thereby severing their last ties to past grandeur. Still, despite the hardships, old paradigms die hard, Nunez says...