Word: narwhal
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...second of Richard and Rosemary Martinez's four children, McDermott exchanged his Hispanic surname for a slight variation on his middle one (McDermod) in 1980, four years after he joined the Navy. He served on the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Narwhal, an assignment that required rigorous psychological screening. However, says Bruce Joy, one of his crewmates, "when somebody violated his personal space and got too close to him he responded by sneezing directly in the guy's face." Even so, says Joy, "in the bizarre world of the submarine community there was nothing that would suggest that he would do what...
...embellishment of European collections from the 16th century onward. They were anthologies of real and artificial oddities, things astonishing by their exoticism or the intricacy of their making--or outright fakes, like a dead mermaid fashioned from dried fish and monkey skin. Their cabinets were stuffed with baroque pearls, narwhal tusks, mandrake roots and fossils. The cult of the Wunderkammer rose where the demonic or angelic world view of the Middle Ages shifted into the classifying rationalism of the Enlightenment. "Those are pearls that were his eyes/ Nothing of him that doth fade/ But doth suffer a sea-change/ Into...
...Arts without experiencing a touch of nausea: this is what it has come down to, a ragout of flattering consumer objects floating in a buttery sauce of vicarious chic-Mercedes-Benzes and Daum crystal, Porthault linen and Andy Warhols, Tiepolo drawings and onyx washstands, Dubuffets and silver-garnished narwhal horns...
...Being 90 is a bore," says Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She pulls a twisted ivory narwhal tusk (a gift from Rear Admiral Peary) from a corner of her drawing room, brandishes it like a spear, strikes a Brunhilde pose-then roars with laughter at her performance, flashing an abundance of Roosevelt teeth. At 90, she is as defiantly unconventional as she was in the opening years of the century, when the nation was never sure whether to be delighted or mortified by her then shocking antics-donning riding breeches, driving an automobile, smoking cigarettes, jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool...
...million for the propulsion system of the Narwhal, a new small submarine that would carry an undetermined number of nuclear-tipped missiles and be so fast and maneuverable that it could presumably evade Soviet antisubmarine forces for years to come, though the Soviets have a surprise abuilding in that area themselves (see picture box below...