Word: octogenarians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...most ardent admirers often prefer to remember gruff, octogenarian Colonel Ewart Scott Grogan as he was in the old days, when rugged individualism and a respect for white-skinned authority were the stuff of which empires were made. While still an undergraduate at Cambridge, "Grogs" Grogan earned the envy of Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes by walking the 4,500-mile length of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo "just for the hell of it." "You have done what has been the ambition of every explorer," Rhodes wrote, "and it makes me the more certain that we shall complete the [Cape...
...just the right reviewer for this book: famed patriarch of Boston pols, ex-Mayor James Michael Curley. When he agreed, the paper mailed him a check along with the review copy. Back came the book and check in a few days, with a curt note from the doughty octogenarian: "The matter is in the hands of my attorneys." Reason for his indignation: a strong resemblance between the book's hero, Frank Skeffington, and James Michael Curley. Asked if he considered Skeffington to be a portrait of himself, Curley snapped: "No question about...
...studies, nevertheless, this famous octogenarian has maintained a disinterested, if controversial, stand; he is a scientist first and foremost, a politician only in afterthought. To some members of the Government Department Siegfried represents the Third Republic incarnate. His own countrymen, however, often compare him with Justice Holmes--a liberal and a skeptic...
Busmanship. The chief sadhu and founder of the Kaliaboda math was an octogenarian, self-styled Pagala Baba (mad monk), who had achieved fame when he told a gathering that he was, at the moment of addressing them, also making a divinely simultaneous appearance in a bus traveling from Cuttack to Calcutta. On the basis of this success he claimed to be a personal incarnation of the Hindu god Brahma, and frequently threatened to destroy the universe. His worshipful believers included many rich people from Cuttack and a maharaja or two. Even the police, before breaking into the Kaliaboda math, respectfully...
Later, when the Pasha himself returned from calling on Grandval, a crowd of angry youths blocked his car's passage. Octogenarian El Glaoui himself seized a submachine gun and stood foursquare on the cobblestones until the mob dispersed. Before the sun went down on Marrakech that night, Morocco was the poorer by 10 more dead and 27 wounded...