Word: vestals
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Demi-Rome. It was not an easy matter to decide. The world's oldest profession could claim a long and proud history in Italy. Romulus and Remus, the brothers who founded Rome, it was said, were themselves the bastards of a vestal virgin who yielded to Mars for a consideration. In 1490 a city vicar reported to the Vatican that Rome's prostitutes numbered more than "6,800, not even counting those who live in concubinage and those who, not publicly but in secret, maintain five or six women in their houses." Sixtus V (1585-90) wanted...
...MISSOURI - Stanley Vestal-Farrar & Rinehart...
Steamboats and Gold. Much of the country along the Missouri is still almost as wild as it was then. While Stanley Vestal was writing The Missouri near Sioux City, Iowa, the wild geese, held up in their spring flight by a six-inch snow, made such a racket that sleep was impossible. Through its loveliest country the Missouri is rich in historic sites that almost nobody ever sees because nobody ever uses the river for travel any more -old campgrounds, old trading posts and forts, Indian battlefields, old steamboat landings that date from the days when river boats pushed...
...inch armor-piercing bomb smashed through the side of the Vestal and penetrated three decks before it exploded in a metal storeroom. The Utah sank in eleven minutes after the first torpedo smacked her. Another bomb went through the Curtiss' upper works, made a shambles of the electronic equipment in the radio room, trapped two enlisted men under the radio transmitters, passed through the movie projection room and set fire to the film stored there. A bomb went through several decks of the Raleigh, came out the other side and exploded nearly 50 feet away...
Although battleships suffered most, cruisers did not escape. The Honolulu, Helena and Raleigh were disabled. So were other vessels: the 8,100-ton repair ship Vestal, the new 8,625-ton seaplane tender Curtiss. The minelayer Oglala, with the destroyers Shaw, Cassin and Downes and the target ship Utah (a retired battleship) were reported lost in Secretary Knox's report...