Word: madagascars
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...which has been using SNAP (Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) power packs since 1961, has had three accidents. A Navy navigation satellite failed to reach orbit in 1964 and disintegrated in the atmosphere over Madagascar. A meteorological satellite was aborted on launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1968, and the nuclear package was recovered intact. As Apollo 13 returned from an unsuccessful moon flight in 1970, the three astronauts had to jettison their unused moon lander, and its power pack plunged into the Pacific Ocean near Australia...
...less than one mile long and 700 yards wide. Its flora consists of four coconut palms and some nondescript bushes that submerge whenever the sea turns rough. Nonetheless, Tromelin has become the focus of a heated political controversy. Three nations claim it: France, which currently controls it, Mauritius and Madagascar (formerly Malagasy). Their feud may have to be resolved by the International Court of Justice in The Hague...
...rival and more recent claim has been instituted by Madagascar, 260 miles to the west. Madagascar's President Didier Ratsiraka last month announced that his Marxist republic is the rightful owner not only of Tromelin but of three other small French islands: Europa, Juan de Nova and Glorieuses. It is said that Ratsiraka wants Tromelin in order to establish a Soviet base there. That seems unlikely: because of the coral reefs, large ships could never venture inshore, and Tromelin is so small that a large airplane would run out of island before it could brake to a stop...
...Riebeeck imported slaves from Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Ceylon and the Malay Archipelago; during the first few years of the settlement, he encouraged his men to marry slave women who had been converted to Christianity. There was also casual mating between visiting European sailors and local nomadic Hottentot women, and between slaves, half-breeds and the Hottentots. In 1682 the Cape colony rulers decreed that whites could not marry freed slaves of "full color" but could continue to marry half-breeds. Nonetheless, "irregular unions" continued...
...nature ... chosen by the middle-level authorities in the eastern territories overrun by the Nazis, and partly a cynical extrapolation by the central SS authorities of Hitler's anti-Semitic decrees." Hitler, the author insists, had wanted to settle the "Jewish question" by relocating Jews in Africa or Madagascar after the war, although when he finally learned about the extermination program, he "took no action to rebuke the guilty...