Word: shipwrecks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hidden fingers of coral dug into the bottom of the Endeavour and the hearts of every man aboard. Ordinarily, 18th century seamen panicked fast. Most of them were too superstitious to learn how to swim; they felt it would only prolong the agony of drowning. The only rule of shipwreck and death was to loot the liquor supplies and drink oneself insensible in the short time left to live...
...Juice. In Australia he made a more amusing error. Spotting a strange new hopping animal, he asked the aborigines about it, was answered with the word "Kanguroo" and never learned that the word meant "I don't understand you." After the near shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef, the Endeavour was badly in need of a drydock, and Cook put in at Jakarta (then Batavia). The two-month stay salvaged the ship but wrecked the crew. Seven men died of malaria and dysentery in the fetid port, another two dozen on shipboard as the Endeavour limped her solitary...
Lehmann pinned his hopes to two monster new productions: Rameau's forgotten Les Indes Galantes and Weber's beautiful but silly Oberon. "I wanted to give people plenty to look at," he says. "Les Indes has a shipwreck with thunder and lightning. In Oberon, cities appear by magic and goddesses are wafted to the clouds." Last week, the Paris public and press were devouring the new Oberon like happy children with ice cream cones...
...impenetrable Oxford-don manner, Rab Butler sat down. The Laborites sat in morose silence: he had left them few chinks to shoot at. Two or three Tories had brought along their silk toppers, the traditional thing to wave on jubilatory occasions, and now waved them with the fervor of shipwreck survivors signaling smoke on the horizon. Prime Minister Churchill, however, was not satisfied with the demonstration. His face working with emotion, he rose and wigwagged some papers in his hand to rouse his backbenchers to louder applause. To old Winston Churchill, who was himself Chancellor the last time taxes were...
...nerve surgery. A psychiatrist suspected an emotional basis for the illness, but could not track it down. It took eight minutes to hypnotize the patient, and while in the trance, he had one of his spells, with "the shakes." In a second session he reported seeing a shipwreck, but tried to ignore it. At last, prodded by the therapist, he recalled and relived his own shipwreck of seven years before, when many of his buddies died in a torpedo attack. Conscious again, he admitted that he had been brooding and dreaming about that attack. He was shown that his spells...