Word: spoonful
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Showman Elman (who gets people like Kathleen Winsor, Helen Jepson and Ac tress Elissa Landi to add atmosphere) sells mostly curios of the famous and infamous. Samples: Adolf Hitler's dice ($150); Thomas Alva Edison's personal dental chair ($300) ; a spoon made by Paul Revere ($105); Mark Twain's portable writing desk ($125); a dagger owned by Rudolph Valentino ($200); a letter from Field Marshal Rommel to his wife, dated October 1943, which read: "Russian campaign going well. . . . Americans not ready...
...would place Franklin Roosevelt in the cellar with Grant and Harding. . . . Grant was a great soldier, even if he was a bad President; Harding achieved success as an editor, starting at the bottom in American tradition. F.D.R. had no personal achievement of any kind, being born with a silver spoon in his mouth...
...Council Bluffs, Iowa "escape-proof" jail eight weeks ago (TIME, Jan. 29), the Toothbrush Twins had been touring the U.S. The two hoodlums-tough, tall John Giles and tough, short Edgar Cook-gained their freedom and their nicknames by unlocking six steel doors with a toothbrush and a wooden spoon. They made their escape in a blue police car, abandoned it, stole another automobile, abandoned it, stole another-and in this fashion set out across the countryside, plying their trade (burglary) from time to time...
...take off like a P-38." The policemen chuckled. The third-floor cells had tool-proof bars, and six steel doors barred the only possible route of escape. But in the hours before dawn the shoeless prisoners began unlocking doors-with keys made from a wooden spoon and a toothbrush. They walked downstairs to the basement, crawled through a window, climbed into the blue police car and "took off like a P-38," while a startled cop banged away with his revolver...
...evening he liked to read poetry aloud to the assembled family, or sing snatches of Gilbert & Sullivan and Scottish ballads. He loved to play the "heavy villain" in family melodramas, "dragging one foot behind him, scowling over his shoulder," and barking his favorite ejaculation: "By the great horn spoon...