Word: merlins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Joseph Merlin inspected the little metal wheels on his shoes, tuned his violin and shoved off on his rolling, novelty entrance to Mrs. Corneily's masquerade in Soho Square, London. He raised his bow and rolled forward. He found that he could not steer. Neither could he stop. He screamed. Two seconds later, Mrs. Corneily's ?500 mirror was in splinters, the fiddle was matchwood, and Merlin was bleeding like a pig. Thus, in 1760, the sport of roller skating was born...
Last week the first history of the sport was published: Roller Skating Through the Years by Brooklyn rink-owner Morris Traub (William-Frederick Press, $1). It captured the nostalgic whirl and clatter of skates from the days of Joseph Merlin to those of Western Union...
...nearly a century after Merlin's smashing entrance, the sport remained a parlor trick. In 1849 grand opera really put it on its wheels. For an ice-skating scene in Meyerbeer's Le Prophète, the ballet wore rollers. Rehearsals were bruising-one ballet skater landed in the bass drum-but in London and Paris the scene was a hit. Skating became an international rage...
...year ago they tried stepping the plane up with a more powerful engine, and passed the tip on to the U.S. Air Forces, which took up the same experiment. The present P-51B is ail-American except for the design of its 1,500-h.p. Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engine (same type used in the latest Spitfires). It chews the air with a four-bladed propeller, has a two-speed, two-stage supercharger which gives it speed and climb upstairs and down...
...Washington and Lee University President Dr. Francis P. Gaines; Virginia's Rt. Rev. Henry St. George Tucker, president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America; onetime NBC President Merlin H. Aylesworth; American Legion Auxiliary national President Ruth H. Mathebat; and Mrs. Du Pont. They gave the companion $1,000 award, for the radio station best serving its community and the nation, to General Electric's short-wave station KGEI of San Francisco...