Word: openers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...tombs were untouched until the Napoleonic invasion of 1808, when French troops drove out the nuns and turned the cloister into a barracks. Later, when Wellington's troops in turn drove out the French, the nuns returned to their desecrated convent to find a ghastly spectacle: tombs torn open, their occupants (whose bodies the nuns regarded as sacred) sitting up or falling out haphazardly, valuables gone. The shocked nuns hastily replaced the bodies as best they could, and without outside help replaced the heavy lids of the sarcophagi. For another century the royal dead of Las Huelgas remained, unseen...
White-haired Lorenzo Garcia, the only man allowed within its walls, had been the cloister's sexton for almost 40 years when his curiosity about the tombs finally got the better of him. One night while the nuns were safely asleep, Garcia pried open one of the coffins with a heavy metal hook. After fishing around patiently, he pulled out a fragment of gold brocade. Then, afraid of a sound scolding from the abbess, he hid his find, kept his secret to himself. Finally Garcia confided in Archeologist José Luis Monteverde, curator of national property. Monteverde communicated with...
...bodies of Castile's ancient rulers are now back in their tombs, dressed this time in the white robes and black hoods of the Cistercians. Their clothes and accouterments, displayed in 18 glass cases, are open to the study of a few visitors, who enter the convent discreetly through a door that the nuns leave "unguarded." Sexton Garcia is pleased with the fruits of his nocturnal curiosity. Says he: "This museum should really bear my name...
...cottonseed producers were happy. Southern Congressmen had pressured CCC to buy the seed from farmers at a support price of $46.50 a ton, higher than the local open-market price of $45 and under. Producers were, of course, the only ones happy. Processors, who turn the seed into cottonseed cake for cattle feed, com plained that they were unable to compete with the Government's purchases and get the seed they needed. Result: there was a shortage, though possibly temporary, of cottonseed cake and the price jumped from $60 to $68 a ton in six weeks.* This naturally made...
...Processors complained that they could not even buy from CCC's stockpile; the seed had not matured enough in the open air. By the time it does, deterioration from the weather may make it unusable...