Word: guano
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Dates: during 1925-1925
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...roofs, never made rainproof, fell in; houses, made of mud, sank to the ground in soggy heaps. Water-filled boats sank. As the waters rose, cattle, gardens, buildings, whole farms and villages were swept from the earth into the sea. The largest losses, practically total, were suffered by the guano* industry. Islands off Peru from which 119,000 tons of guano (nine million dollars' worth) were mined last year, were stripped of their ancient deposits by the deluge, which had the double effect of scouring and of converting the guano chemically into rapidly evaporating ammonias...
...Guano, bird dung, valuable because of its nitrate content for fertilizer. When the rains came, the nitrates, escaping as ammonia, left the guano agriculturally impotent...
...whose present place as a storm center of controversy was emphasized by the award, were regarded as worthless, and the boundary lines of Chile, Peru, and Bolivia in that territory were but roughly defined. Then the spread of scientific farming methods, and the inadequacy of the South American guano deposits to meet the demand for fertilizing nitrates, led to the discovery and exploitation of the vast desert deposits in the Tacna-Arica districts...