Word: polynesian
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...Thor Heyerdahl set off across the Pacific on a 45-ft. balsa raft he called Kon-Tiki, the Incan name for sun-god. Young Heyerdahl entertained a theory that Incan raftsmen might thus have freighted their civiliza tion to Polynesia. He failed to convince most fellow scholars that Peruvian-Polynesian cultural coincidences were more than just that. But by Aug. 7, when he cracked up on a coral reef 4,300 miles from Peru (and 250 miles east of Tahiti), Heyerdahl had proved indubitably that a balsa raft could cross the Pacific. He had also become a celebrity...
...door. For Fanatics there is also a miniature petrified forest in which to frolic. The Round Room, designed without a single corner, features a circular bed with translucent chiffon panels above. At the pull of a silken rope, the panels part, revealing a skylight view of the stars. The Polynesian Room offers a ten-foot hammock, the Arabian Room a floor-level bed surrounded by mirrors and 1,001 pillows, and the Psychedelic Room, decorated in screaming reds and oranges, is equipped for light shows...
...cancer; in Manhattan. Though married to Peter A.B. Widener II, heir to the racing and breeding dynasty, the beautiful socialite was determined to make it on her own; under her own colors, she bred and raced such horses as Hula Dancer and Dan Cupid. Her greatest was the stallion Polynesian, winner of the 1945 Preakness and sire of the magnificent Native Dancer...
...pharmacies are almost everywhere. For all that, no one would mistake Madagascar for France. Director of Information Flavien Renaivo describes it as "L'lle-au-Bout-du-Monde" (The Island at the End of the World). Though it lies 250 miles off East Africa, its people are largely Polynesian rather than African, and the language is related to Javanese dialects. Much of the plant and animal life is unique to the island area; lemurs and about one-half of the 800 local varieties of butterflies exist wild nowhere else. The pace of life is slow, but in recent weeks...
...Potshots. Maziere begins his tale with an indignant account of Easter Island's sufferings in recent centuries. The island was discovered on Easter Sunday, 1722, by a Dutch admiral named Roggeveen, who was intrigued by the stone giants and observed that although some of the natives were obviously Polynesian, others had white skins and red hair. He also let his men shoot down a few indigenes after a minor misunderstanding. Subsequent Western visitors apparently felt free to kill any native on whim. In 1811, an American whaler added a touch of Yankee ingenuity. Some island girls were lured aboard...