Word: houstonic
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...wildcatter" Ray Cullen's efforts to convince a man named Judge R. E. Brooks to invest in drilling for crude in 1920: "That the judge couldn't find oil in a barrel didn't matter to Cullen; all that mattered was that Brooks and a dozen other leading Houston citizens had committed money to this drill site. Cullen politely suggested Judge Brooks pick the spot to break ground, and he did. When Cullen realized they had nothing to mark it, he walked to a mound of what Texans tastefully call "cow chips," pick up a few dry chunk, and piled...
...another. Another took to riding a pet lion to meet the mailman; yet another tried in vain to keep penguins in a walk-in freezer. One wrote Pablo Picasso asking to buy ten paintings; he didn't specify color or type, just the size of his wall. A Houston oilman's wife wrote to the Smithsonian to ask whether the Hope Diamond was for sale. Then there were the two oilmen who loved playing practical jokes on each other; the high point of their duel came when one took a European vacation and his rival erected a full-size roller...
...last helicopter mission came on a warm and moonless night in South Texas on June 8, 2008. A few scattered clouds floated 1,200 ft. above the Huntsville International Airport. The sky was clear for miles. But just south of town, a low cloud swept in over Sam Houston National Forest. The fog already had thwarted another helicopter pilot who had tried to fly a patient from Huntsville Memorial Hospital to Houston. Blinded by the fog, that pilot was forced to turn around and abort the mission. Ninety minutes after that, Kirby was asked to fly the same patient...
...knew about the first, failed mission. But he couldn't see the cloud, which lingered in a gap between airport weather stations. Kirby decided it was safe to launch. He flew his bright yellow Bell 407 helicopter to the hospital, picked up the patient, and took off for Houston at 2:46 a.m. Two minutes later, Kirby was flying 600 ft. above dense forest at 122 m.p.h., near the spot where the first pilot aborted. Kirby lost radio contact with the hospital in Houston. His helicopter dropped suddenly, to 100 ft. Its rotor sliced into thick pine trees. The cabin...
...biggest partier on the planet, Diddy, will be in town to host a bash. Lad mag Maxim, Playboy's rival for absurd Super Bowl extravagance - its 2004 bash in Houston, "Circus Maximus," featured Ferris wheels, fortune tellers, cancan dancers and Paris Hilton - is proceeding but with half as many guests as last year. "We're not immune to what's going on," says Glenn Rosenbloom, president of the Alpha Media Group, which publishes Maxim. "But having said that, our readers love football, our advertisers love football, and so do we." The sponsors for the party, which will take place...