Word: grottos
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...intrepid explorers scramble down volcanic chimneys, bathe in a grotto lined with glittering quartzes, stagger through regions of miasmal fumes and luminous algae, survive an attack by giant lizards, sail on a raft across an underground sea, get wrecked in the whirlpool that spins around the planet's axis, stumble into sunken Atlantis, and finally are sucked into a volcanic vent and blown out the top of Mount Stromboli (altitude: 3,040 ft.) into the Tyrrhenian...
Wise Men & Gifts. Long before the date of Christmas was fixed in the calendar (by Pope Julius I in the middle of the 4th century), the cave or stable in Bethlehem had been an object of veneration. St. Justin Martyr mentioned the present Grotto of the Nativity as early as 155; a century later, Origen discussed the authenticity of the site (even Christianity's enemies, he said, admitted it). The manger scene-with the Wise Men from Matthew and the shepherds from Luke-is one of the oldest Christian traditions. It is also the easiest to dramatize. Canticles...
Senile Ghost. Alfred's son Fritz was a pudgy, gourmandizing sybarite, who fattened Kruppdom by gobbling up coal and iron mines and the shipyards at Kiel. But his chief bequest was "the Capri scandal." There, in a Tiberian grotto, guarded by boys garbed as Franciscan friars, he staged Black Masses and homosexual orgies. When his wife protested, he had her locked up as insane. Just when the whole affair broke in the German press, Fritz suffered a fatal stroke and was eulogized by Kaiser Wilhelm II in a state funeral...
...beauty of its vivid-hued cliffs and luminous Blue Grotto, Italy's fabled Bay of Naples island of Capri owes its reputation less to its scenery than to two of its former inhabitants. One was the Emperor Tiberius, who retired some 1,900 years ago to a mountaintop villa from which, records Suetonius, "condemned persons, after long and exquisite tortures, used to be hurled, on his orders and in his presence, into the sea." The other was British Author Norman Douglas, whose bestselling South Wind (1917) painted a thinly disguised picture of Capri as a haunt of elegant wickedness...
...Lourdes International Information Center, and added that despite constant allegations in the anticlerical press that the church gets a rake-off from Lourdes merchants, "there is absolutely no collusion between the bishop and the city." (The church's only income from the shrine: $500,000 yearly from Grotto collection boxes and sale of religious books, all used to maintain the buildings.) As for the pious objects, "we cannot suppress bad taste," said Father Gabel. "But we will advise against them, trusting that Lourdes businessmen, like film producers in America, will see the error of their ways...