Word: hangman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Mahmud was hailed by the thunderous cry of "Salavat" (Felicity to Mohammed and his descendants). Before his hands were bound, Mahmud handed a ring to the executioner, an ancient custom intended to ensure a speedy death for a condemned man. The noose was slipped about his neck, and the hangman and his assistants hauled smartly on the rope. Mahmud shot six feet off the ground-then the rope broke, and he fell heavily to earth...
Getting dazedly to his feet, Mahmud gestured toward the hangman, grinned and shouted to the crowd: "He wants another ring!" He twisted his bound hands sufficiently to draw out a second ring from his pocket. The crowd broke into ululations of "Salavat!" Someone shouted for Mahmud to sing a song, and he obliged. A peasant stepped forward, cried: "I am from Kuchesfahan. I don't know this man and don't know why they are hanging him. Let them hang me in his stead." Others cried: "He is young-have pity!" and "Let him live...
Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, 65, tough, devious, versatile, flies into the U.S. this week with the enigmatic fame of the "Hangman of the Ukraine" and the "Butcher of Budapest," who has nonetheless restored to the U.S.S.R. (pop. 208 million) its broadest measure of liberty and prosperity since the Bolshevik Revolution. Khrushchev's intentions in the U.S. are just as enigmatic. Is he seeking a genuine thaw in the cold war that might lead to forms of peace? Is he seeking an American acceptance of the status quo of Communist conquests, a softening-up of American will? Is he trying...
...Numbers. Moving by the numbers, hat-changing ministers rushed from meetings of the Big Three to reconstitute themselves as The Four, The Six, The Eleven, The Fifteen, The Seventeen. They talked of defense shortcomings, of economic welfare, of hangman's justice in Cyprus, and gun patrols off Iceland...
...Ballad of Reading Gaol, The Quare Fellow records the atmosphere, the emotions, the tensions of convicts and gaolers as execution nears. But, in Behan's play, as atmospheric pressure mounts, the need for outlets intensifies. Voices are raised, and fists; a half-brutal, half-compulsive humor dominates; the hangman gets drunk; officials get edgy; one warder carries out his job, but in a cold sweat of horror and guilt...