Word: hummed
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...bees, the lowing of cattle, the gentle purl of streams like the Beult, the Great Stour and the Little Stour. But in the Kentish village of Molash, 8½ miles from Canterbury, grey-haired Hilda Hyams, 54, was being driven mad by another sound: a low-pitched, persistent hum. Her novelist husband, Edward, could not hear the hum, but he dutifully checked the water pipes and main, arranged to have the electrical wires near the house slackened, even cut off the telephone. Hilda Hyams went to an ear specialist and neurologists, who found that her hearing was acute...
Mortally Dismal. Last summer a U.S. friend visited the Hyamses in Molash. Her first words were: "Can't you turn off that disgusting hum? It's so mortally dismal." Overjoyed to find confirmation of the sound, Mrs. Hyams fell on her friend's neck and kissed...
With two women suffering before his eyes, Novelist Hyams wrote to a local newspaper asking if any other Kentishmen were hearing the hum. He was staggered by the response: letters poured in from Maidstone and Canterbury, from Ashford, Wye and Deal. A woman in Australia wrote that she had heard the hum before she emigrated from Kent. Said Hyams: "We could scarcely get through the door because of the mound of mail." Most of the writers expressed relief be cause they had not dared mention the hum before, each thinking he was the only one hearing...
...good random beginner's list might include Hector Berlioz ("EC-tor BEAR-li-oss"), Emil Waldteufel ("VAAL-toy-ful"), Kurt Weill's Die Dreigrosch-enoper ("Dee Dry-GROSH-en-oper"), Puccini's Gianni Schicchi ("Johnny SKEE-ky"), Prokofiev's ballet, Chout ("Shoo!"), Conductor Eugen Jochum ("OY-gen YOK-hum"), Pianist Jorge Bo-let ("HOAR-hay Bo-LETT"). Advanced players will discover certain unaccountable omissions: where are Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda or Composers Karl Heinz Stockhausen and Max Wilhelm Karl Vogrich...