Word: powderly
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...proof" of any whisky is equal to double the amount of alcohol it contains; 100 proof means 50% alcohol by volume, the other half being distilled water, coloring and the like. "Proof" originally was a place where gunpowder was tested. Early distillers adopted the term, because they used powder to gauge the strength of liquor. They would mix a sample of newly condensed alcohol with an equal amount of gunpowder and strike a match to it. If the mixture failed to burn, the liquor was too weak; if it erupted into a violent flame, it was too strong...
...town of Calcutta. There were 50,000 regulars in the Nawab's army, and in the fort only 515 Europeans able to bear arms -such arms as were available. Thanks to Governor Roger Drake, a 34-year-old ineffectual, fifty cannon were rusted useless, and almost all the powder was too damp to burn...
...state can. In the capital city of Conakry, the nationalized Printania store displays empty shelves, broken windows, and East European canned goods (gulyás, pickled pork, beans), as well as toy Chinese Communist trucks at $8 apiece and East German pliers for $4. Women queue up for soap powder, tin buckets and sandals cut from old bicycle tires...
...situation at Harvard was so bad that Professor Eliphalet Pearson kept what he called a Journal of Disorders. "In the hall at breakfast this morning," he recorded on Dec. 9, "bisket, tea cups, saucers & a knife thrown at tutors. At evening prayers the lights were all extinguished by powder and lead." A partial list of college casualties during this period includes one undergraduate dead in a duel at South Carolina College and another at Dickinson, several students shot at Ohio's Miami University, a professor killed at the University of Virginia, and the president of Mississippi's Oakland...
...Dover, Del., U.S.O. Worker Pansy Pendergrass collected 8,000 books. In Michigan, with Republican Governor George Romney's blessing, a newspaper reporter organized a drive that amassed 7,000 cans of soft drinks, 6,500 cans of foot powder, 5,000 bottles of aspirin, 45,000 tubes of toothpaste, 4,500 packages of gum, and thousands more handy items from applesauce to shaving cream...