Word: rulers
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When the Roman emperor Hadrian ascended to power in A.D. 117, he inherited a state in crisis. Trajan, his predecessor, had stretched the Roman Empire to its furthest reaches through aggressive military campaigns, sparking rebellions from Britain to the shores of the Persian Gulf. Once installed as ruler, Hadrian reversed the expansionist trend and withdrew troops from what is now Iraq. Thorsten Opper, a curator of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum, says Hadrian realized then what coalition forces realize now: that it's easier to control territory through a friendly, well-functioning government than through occupation...
What about those Abu Ghraib photographs? In "King Leopold's Soliloquy," a fulminating essay he published in 1905, when he was a very cantankerous 70, Twain imagines the ruler of Belgium pitying himself for the inconvenience of photos showing natives of the Congo whose hands have been cut off by Belgian exploiters. In the good old days, Leopold complains, he could deny atrocities and be believed. "Then all of a sudden came the crash! That is to say, the incorruptible Kodak--and all the harmony went to hell! The only witness I have encountered in my long experience that...
...turmoil of constant local wars and foreign invasions prompted Jaipur's ruler, Jai Singh II, to begin building Jantar Mantar in 1724. The astronomical observatory would allow soothsayers to monitor cosmic shifts so as to better divine auspicious dates for royal enterprises, and to predict the fate of ruler and ruled. Nestled in the heart of New Delhi, Jantar Mantar today is mainly a tourist attraction, although it continues to function as an observatory of sorts - a window into what the writer V.S. Naipaul called "India's million mutinies...
...even long-suffering Zimbabweans know that no regime is forever. Back in 1965 the country's white ruler Ian Smith - who declared unilateral independence from Britain of what was then called Rhodesia - vowed that "not in one thousand years, not in my lifetime" would black majority rule come to the country. Fifteen years later he retired to his farm, after being ousted from power - by a liberation movement led by Robert Mugabe...
Iavarone bought his piece of the horse from Paul Pompa, a New Jersey guy who runs a Brooklyn trucking company. Pompa was offered some $1.5 million extra for Big Brown from the stable run by Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, who doubles as the most powerful man in horse-racing. No one says no to the Sheik. But Pompa did, because he wanted to keep a 25% share in Big Brown. Before the Preakness, venerable Kentucky stud farm Three Chimneys bought Big Brown's breeding rights for upwards of $50 million, putting at least...