Word: malta
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...help that came up from northern Italy was swiftly answered. Britain and the U.S. sent amphibious aircraft, helicopters, "weasels" and "ducks" from Germany, Malta and Trieste. These, together with a native fishing fleet, carried out a Dunkirk-like evacuation of the flooded areas. At week's end, 200,000 homeless Italians were queueing up for meals before Italian army field kitchens, and sleeping in jammed schools, churches and homes in such fabled cities as Verona, Padua, Vicinza and Cremona...
Died. Prince Ludovico Chigi Albani della Rovere, 85, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, hereditary "Marshal of the Conclave" at which Popes are elected, dabbler in science (he was an expert on marine worms); of angina pectoris; in Rome...
Turbulent seas almost washed out the show Eisenhower had come to witness, featuring some 30 warships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and five Dutch ships. Marine amphibious landings on Malta, mine-laying off Sicily by Navy bombers from French Morocco, and practice landings by French navy pilots on the 45,000-ton carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt were all canceled. But at the end of two days, a helicopter windmilled through grey, moist skies and gingerly deposited a grinning Eisenhower on the flight deck of the Roosevelt. There he watched the Navy's Corsairs, Skyraiders and twin-jet Banshees bombing...
...that whenever the U.S. delivers new planes to Italy, the government must scrap older planes, although they may still be useful as trainers or transports. But the Italian government thought of an ingenious-and legal-dodge: instead of destroying the old planes, it transferred them to the Knights of Malta,* who are theoretically sovereign, issue their own passports, send diplomats to half a dozen Roman Catholic countries. Last week Rome admitted with a broad smile that three years ago the Italian government turned over 36 three-engined Savora-Marchetti bombers to the Knights, who converted them to ambulance planes. Recently...
...Roman Catholic order which fought in the Crusades, later defended the island of Rhodes (off the mainland of Turkey) against Mussulman pirates. In 1530 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V gave the Knights sovereign control of the island of Malta, which they made one of the ramparts of Christendom. In 1814 the Knights lost Malta to the British, retired to Rome. Today their 5,500 members (including 280 Americans) run 200 hospitals and boys' towns in Europe and Latin America...