Word: skaters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...National Shawmut Bank in Boston; a 24-year-old fur worker from Brooklyn; a 29-year-old high-school principal from Georgia; the floor manager of the Hi-Skor bowling alley in Washington; a printer from Worcester; a lawyer; a section hand; a real-estate dealer; a professional roller skater; the 25 -year-old assistant office manager of a wholesale grocery firm in Allentown; an employe of the Arkansas Power and Light Co.; a brakeman on the New York Central; a 22 -year-old butcher from Fresno...
...nearly a century after Merlin's smashing entrance, the sport remained a parlor trick. In 1849 grand opera really put it on its wheels. For an ice-skating scene in Meyerbeer's Le Prophète, the ballet wore rollers. Rehearsals were bruising-one ballet skater landed in the bass drum-but in London and Paris the scene was a hit. Skating became an international rage...
...made special contributions. The first skate that could be steered was invented by Yankee machinist James Leonard Plimpton in 1863. It consisted of two pairs of wheels which turned inward or outward as the skater shifted his weight. Modern skates still use this principle. Jackson Haines, father of figure skating on ice, mastered the pre-Plimpton rollers and toured Europe...
Next the Nazis tried terror. Two famed skiers, Krisitian Aubert and Tor Salvesen, were questioned by the Gestapo; burly torturers trampled on their chests until shattered ribs pierced their lungs. Skater Ivar Ballanrud and scores of other athletes were arrested. But of Norway's 300,000 organized sportsmen, no more than 1% went over to the quislings...
Mabel Fairbanks is no carbon copy of Sonja Henie or Maribel Vinson. But experts rate her superior to most white amateurs and unquestionably the best skater of her race. Shy, timid and coal-black, she tried on her first pair of skates less than four years ago. Within six months she was mastering spirals, sit-down spins and stops -figures that spill many a veteran. A manager took Mabel in tow, dubbed her "The Swanee Snow Bird" because she was born in Florida, booked her at a scattering of Manhattan rinks. She learned how to dance...