Word: racketeered
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...people thought the whole idea was stupid, sacrilegious. But finally there came a boom. The whole country became lightning-rod-minded. In 1885 a body of scientific men studied the Washington Monument, already hit a few times, and recommended conductors for it. Wide-awake salesmen made a racket of the craze, slapping useless pieces of metal on roofs. Gradually people became aware of the fact that lightning was striking even where the so-called rods were. The rods were thereupon denounced as expensive folly. About the turn of the century, "lightning rod salesman" became synonymous in New England with "horse...
...Still persistent last week was the autastic rumor that Alfonse ("Scarface") Capone rules the Tom Thumb trade. A likely explanation was that Colyumist Walter Winchell, broadcasting gossip, once said something about as follows: "Tom Thumb Golf is the newest racket; first thing we know Al Capone will have grifted into...
...national junior championships (all expenses paid) she earned her keep by bringing home the cup. More, she attracted the favorable attention of one of the moguls of the U. S. L. T. A. Her rise was inevitable and steady. An ageing Helen Wills fell before her nimble racket, and she was champion. She was popular: she had a nice smile, she was attractive, she had pretty legs. Said a bystander at one of her matches: "Most good players haven't nice legs, have they? Betty's [Nuthall] are thick, and Eileen's [Bennett] are sort of funny, and Helen...
Florence soon found that tennis racket had more than one meaning. And she made the most of her many opportunities: "writing" for newspaper syndicates, endorsing cosmetics, giving concerts. In London she would come to dinner for a flat sum. When her father's business failed it did not matter; Florence was now the family moneymaker. But she found the business of being a champion took more than brawn, more than brains; in self defense she had become a cold-eyed, hard-shelled racketeer. When the man she loved but thought she could not afford to marry finally saw what...
...Jose, Calif., M. T. Moran. 62, stage acrobat, turned a somersault over the back of his car when it was struck by a Southern Pacific R. R. train, saved himself from certain death. "Guess I've got a good racket at that," said M. T. Moran...