Word: instantly
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...England's mellowest legends concerns a Countess of Salisbury who found her garter slipping, in the merry, ardent days of Edward III (1312-77). Down and down slipped the garter until it tumbled before the knowing eyes of a pack of smirking courtiers. But Edward III, with instant chivalry, stooped, retrieved the ribbon, tied it just below his own royal knee, and exclaimed to the Courtiers in immortal reproof: "Honi soit qui mal y pense!" (Evil be to him who evil thinks...
Poles under sentence to hang were worried. They know that a noose smartly drawn up (with knot close under one ear of the condemned) will bring instant, pain less death, by snapping the neck. Such have been the nooses of experienced Hangman Maciejewski, a onetime medical student. On the other hand, a loose and slovenly noose brings slow strangulation, lingering agony...
Suddenly came a boom, a roar, and the Square of Julius Caesar trembled as if a giant had stamped. Clouds of dust surged up over the crowd and cloaked for an instant the awful tragedy which had occurred. A bomb, planted in the base of the lamp post had exploded. Merciless because inanimate it had blown the laughing girl-child so utterly to atoms that afterwards only her left hand could be found, and identified by a thin, cheap ring...
...those who had stood near the lamp post 18 were killed. One was a woman who had stepped to her window nearby a bare instant before the explosion. At her a flying bit of iron lamp post hurtled, inflicting a mortal wound...
Seemingly the bomb was fitted with a clock work mechanism timed to explode at the instant when His Majesty was scheduled to pass. Kings, however, are too experienced to risk their lives by keeping to a time table known to every assassin. Therefore His Majesty was a good ten minutes motor ride distant when the bomb exploded. Though prudent, he is no coward. "Drive on," he said with compressed lips when told of the explosion, "Keep to the original route, through the Piazza Giulio Cesare...