Word: guillotines
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Charles Ill's eldest son, Charles Henri, who became the Roi Soleil of the dynasty. Progressive as well as dedicated, he was enthusiastic over a new invention described to him by Drs. Antoine Louis and Joseph Guillotin and on April 25 1792, he tried it out. The Parisian crowds cried, "Bring back the block," but Charles Henri Sanson was well pleased. "Simplicity and absence of noise," he said happily, after the test...
...expression "go to the dickens," a Victorian nice-nellyism for "go to the devil." But Dickens' perpetually optimistic Mr. Micawber produced micawberish and the pompous Mr. Bumble lent his name to incompetence forever after. Similarly, a hangman named Derrick is immortalized in hoisting devices, French Physician Joseph Guillotin in a machine which struck him as more humane than the ax, and be-trousered Suffragette Amelia Bloomer in billowing pantalets. It is a process that has never stopped, concludes Partridge happily-from Solon, who became a synonym for lawyer, to Mae West, who became a life jacket...