Word: south
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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This week, the Communist radio blared out an ultimatum: Li had just three days to say yes or no to Mao's "peace" terms. Yes or no, Li Tsung-jen's dream of decent peace and a non-Communist China south of the Yangtze was fading fast...
Just before his retirement to his native village of Fenghua last January, President Chiang Kai-shek thoughtfully moved some $300 million of Nationalist gold, silver and foreign exchange from Nanking and Shanghai to safer vaults in Formosa and South China. There it was put under tight control of generals and officials loyal to Chiang. If the Communists toppled the peace-seeking government of Acting President Li Tsung-jen and tried to occupy all of China, the gold and silver would serve Chiang's still-faithful followers as a nest egg for further resistance against the Reds...
When a woolly mammoth died on the Siberian tundra, it sometimes fell into a quagmire. There the permafrost, operating like a modern freezer, preserved the carcass intact for thousands of years. In temperate New Zealand there was no permafrost but in South Island's Pyramid Valley paleontologists have found a good substitute. From about 18,000 B.C. until 2,-000 years ago, the valley contained a swamp whose lush vegetation attracted moas-great, flightless birds which weighed up to a quarter...
...moas found ranged from the 12-ft.-tall Dinornis maximus down to the ostrich-sized Euryapteryx. Big & little, they apparently wandered into the swamp while feeding. Their enormous feet were fine defensive weapons (the far smaller South American rheas have been known to kick a mule to death), but were no good for bogtrotting. As they sank, the birds kicked and struggled; skeletons have been found with one leg raised as though in a last, despairing kick...
Last week, while the diggers assembled their findings, another expedition was hunting for moas. Dr. Geoffrey B. Orbell, who had proved that the supposedly extinct takahe, a member of the rail family, was flourishing in southwestern South Island (TIME, Dec. 20), was out for bigger game. Though the supersized moas are dead & gone, Dr. Orbell has hopes that the little (turkey-sized) Anomalopteryx moa has not yet kicked its last...