Word: mask
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...windowless grass hut, echoing through the surrounding jungle. Sometimes, instead of the roaring laughter, there might be a fit of giggling. When a tribesman looked into such a hut, he saw no cause for merriment. The laugher was lying ill, exhausted by his guffaws, his face now an expressionless mask. He had no idea that he had laughed, let alone why. New Guinea's Fore (pronounced foray) tribe was afflicted by a deadly foe. It was kuru, the laughing death, a creeping horror hitherto unknown to medicine...
...only cure for such a situation, according to Parkinson, is the old Trojan Horse ploy: "An individual of merit penetrates the outer defenses . . . babbling about golf and giggling feebly, losing documents and forgetting names . . . Only when he has reached high rank does he suddenly throw off the mask . . . With shrill screams of dismay the high executives find ability right there in the midst of them...
...late thirties and early forties, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre starred in a series of exceptional mystery films. The Mask of Dimitrios, like The Maltese Falcon, On Green Dolphin Street and Casablanca, follows modern fairy-tale characters through intriguing morasses of international espionage, murder, and blackmail with a charm that remains fresh...
...narrow gorge and widens to a rock-filled pool 100 ft. wide and 40 ft. deep. The ambassador was slightly worried; his best skin-diving equipment was still in Nantucket, where he had spent the summer. But he pulled on an ill-fitting tank of compressed air, a face mask with a broken strap, and stepped into the water. The mask leaked, and the water was so muddy that he "couldn't see the glass in front of my face." But on the sixth dive, groping through three feet of mud on the bottom, his hand touched the dead...
...violently pro-Axis speeches from Italy during World War II) if he gets out. "At first," said Pound to Il Tempo, "I laughed when the government called Grandpa Ez crazy. But now St. Elizabeths to me is worse than prison. I'm like the Man in the Iron Mask. My mask imprisons my thoughts and smothers my voice." Pooh-poohing the treason charges: "I only met old Muss once, and our conversation pleased neither him nor me. I talked [over the radio] about Roosevelt's follies, but I never said anything against my conscience as an American...