Word: tarantula
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Bosom Companion. In San Antonio, Jail Matron Mamie Lyons frisked a new arrival, shook a pet tarantula out of her brassiere...
...four years Sulzberger traveled an estimated 100,000 miles through 30 countries, was banned successively from Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Italy for his fascist-needling articles. Italy's Virginio Gayda called him "a creeping tarantula, going from country to country, spreading poison." The Gestapo once arrested him as a British spy. As he gained experience, he was sent to Moscow for six months, then south to cover the Allied push up the Continent. His top stories in the past year have bean interviews with Tito and Mikhailovich...
...York Central Railroad's fabulous Founder Cornelius Vanderbilt was burdened by the railroad's presidency for only one year (1918-19). In 1904 he started and refereed the first Vanderbilt Cup Auto Race (the winner averaged 52 m.p.h.), in World War I commanded the U.S.S. Tarantula with the hand of a longtime yachtsman. Famed as the footloose owner of the $3,000,000 diesel yacht Alva (his 1941 gift to the Navy), he studied hard for his master's papers, and could legally have skippered a Queen Mary in any ocean...
...Vitus's dance because a visit to the saint's chapel sometimes worked a cure. The modern medical name for it is tarantism, after the wild Italian folk dance, the tarantella. The Italians have a common belief that the tarantella drives out the poison of a tarantula's bite by causing perspiration, and that the dance was named for the spider. Actually, both dance and spider were named for the city of Taranto, which was hit hard by the dancing mania...
...that if a suitable substance could be found, the same sort of thing could be done deliberately. After much experiment he chose Plexiglas, a mixture of monomers (methyl methacrylate, ethyl methacrylate, etc.) which hardens into a glassy plastic. In blocks of this stuff he immured small dead frogs, a tarantula, the bones of a human hand (see cuts); a rattlesnake's head, complete with fangs, a peacock feather, an iridescent butterfly, a garter snake, flowers, ears of corn, ears of barley. Secretary Wallace, Dr. Sando's chief, keeps a 13-inch ear of hybrid corn, forever young...