Word: oil
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Imam of Yemen, 67, was suffering from arthritis, also reportedly from the effects of chewing too many qat leaves (a common Middle Eastern narcotic), swigging too many flagons of eau de cologne (he likes the stuff), and leaning too heavily on aphrodisiacs. In keeping with Arabian face-keeping, the oil-rich Imam arrived in Rome last month with an entourage of about 90 assorted Yemeni, including several Cabinet ministers, scimitar-bearing guards, three of his Queens, 23 concubines (who, according to the Italian Foreign Office, are not genuine harem types, "just slaves"). The Imam spends his time in Rome...
...Oil is the greatest single source of wealth in America for individual fortunes. At the same time, exploring for it is the greatest source of business failure, a fact to which wildcatters deliberately blind themselves. They disregard the unfulfilled dreams and broken lives that lie buried at the bottom of the staggering total of 300,000 dry holes drilled in America and think only of those who, despite every difficulty, persevered to success...
Thus writes Ruth Sheldon Knowles, 44, longtime (since 1937) U.S. oil consultant and wildcatter, in The Greatest Gamblers (McGraw-Hill; $6), out last week to mark the centennial of U.S. oil. Her message: the U.S. has grown to power in oil because of a few uncommon » men, who were armed only with faith, hope and their own by-guess-and-by-God oil-finding theories...
...making, man-eating industry began in 1859 when Edwin L. Drake, a sickly, bearded failure of a man in a stovepipe hat, brought in the nation's first commercial oil well near Titusville, Pa. Though Discoverer Drake wound up virtually penniless and forgotten, his find opened the scramble for oil across the land...
...Drake's wake came Captain Anthony F. Lucas, an Austrian immigrant with a vague theory that oil is locked under salt domes. He started drilling near Beaumont, Texas and in 1901 struck Spindletop. Within weeks, oilmen there struck no less than six gushers that could produce more oil than the rest of the world combined. More money was lost than gained in the ensuing land rush, but Spindletop spouted 50 million bbl.. spawned three great oil-producing companies: Humble, Texas...