Word: merlin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Souped-Up Power. The water monsters that these men drive are so souped up that the Gold Cup tactics are largely based on simply finishing the race. For power, the hydroplanes use either the Rolls-Royce Merlin or the U.S.-made Allison, which drove some of World War II's fastest fighters. Normally, these engines generate around 1,600 h.p. at 3,000 r.p.m. But this is not enough for the hydroplaners. Mechanics bolster the engines with fancy superchargers and heavy-duty quill shafts until they can turn out some 2,650 h.p. at 4,500 r.p.m., then...
Though the "Merlin law" offered the 2,500 inmates of Italy's 543 licensed houses the opportunity to enter "centers of social re-education," no one really believed that last week's shutdown would end prostitution in Italy. Even Deputy Merlin-who four months ago lost her campaign for re-election to Italy's Senate-concedes that most of the girls from the shuttered houses as well as the vast majority of the nation's 7,000 formerly licensed streetwalkers will simply join the vast army of clandestine prostitutes. Says blunt Angelina Merlin: "Thirty percent...
...closing was the sole triumph of Socialist Deputy Angelina Merlin, whose incessant appeals to conscience had finally driven Italy's reluctant male legislators into outlawing an industry that paid the Italian state $20 million a year in taxes and license fees (TIME...
...doughty little woman with tinted grey-blue hair has finally destroyed a venerable Italian institution: the state-supervised brothel. Angelina Merlin, 68, is Italy's only woman Senator. For ten years she has been nagging Italy's legislators to do the right thing. Last week the Chamber of Deputies ran out of delaying tactics, and by a vote of 385 to 115 ordered that all houses of prostitution (which have been paying a 3% tax on income to the state) be closed within six months, and that their 4,000 girls serving 30,000 clients daily...
Monarchist Deputy Angelo Rubino warned that closing the brothels means "free prostitution, which means nothing less than free contagion." Cried one legislator: "We Italians are an exuberant people with deep sexual needs." (Snorted Senator Merlin scornfully: "Men are men.") But many Italians, aware that their nation is the last one in Europe where prostitution is legal, are glad to see it finished. Said one: "What has been going on here is that houses have been selling the bodies of women, and the government has been taking a percentage of the sale." One young Roman was more cynical. "Now that...