Word: timbuktu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...traveled with a caravan of 60,000 men, and among his camels were 80 that each bore 300 Ibs. of gold. He built his wife a swimming pool in the desert, and filled it with water borne in skins by his slaves; he turned the fabled city of Timbuktu into a trading center and a refuge for scholars. But such medieval empires one by one faded away. Gradually the history of Africa became, not the story of those who lived there, but of men named Livingstone, Stanley, Peters and Rhodes, and of countless anonymous adventurers in search of gold, ivory...
...purest gold, a kind of grass, and a species of hen. Among them was a young Frenchman named René Caillé, who, dressed as an Arab, talked of his captivity by the Egyptians, was accepted as a Moslem and was able to make his famed journey safely to Timbuktu. After him other Frenchmen came, and eventually, by the "rules of the game,"*laid down by the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 for spreading civilization throughout darkest Africa, French hegemony over the area was recognized. The "scramble for Africa" was on, and there was little the Africans could do about...
Last Lift. Last December a Brain whose specialty was explorers tripped over three successive questions. Sample: Who was the first explorer to reach Timbuktu and live? Answer: Rene Caillie. The Brain's Brawn, an amateur champion weight lifter, did well the first two times around, pleaded for time out before attempting to lift 275 Ibs. from a snatch position and 330 Ibs. "clean and jerk." For fully five minutes, viewers watched Brawn parade in front of the camera, flexing muscle and steeling nerve. Finally, to the relief of several hundred thousand Frenchmen, he raised his weights sufficiently high; Brain...
...fungus known as travelogue whimsy. While French African troops grappled with a bevy of Tuaregs in a mock brawl staged for his cameras, Thomas intoned between chuckles: "The bad guys. Versus the good guys . . . Make it look good, Achmed! My grandmother's watching on TV." All this and Timbuktu appeared in Thomas' latest color adventure, a grab bag of odds and ends on African superstitions. The oddest was a weirdly effective sequence showing how the Hova of Madagascar dig up their dead each year, roll them in shiny new wrappings and carry them about in a gay shuffle...
Legend of the Lost (Batjac; United Artists) is filled with authentic Technicolor views of Libya, and packed with authentic Hollywood hokum. The movie stars Rossano Brazzi as a no-good do-gooder, Sophia Loren as a bad girl from Timbuktu, and John Wayne as the man who discovers something good about...