Word: whims
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...when the tides of industry and empire were running with intoxicating speed, Harry Truman was content to be an obscure Missouri county judge. In the '30s, not by his own momentum but by the chance whim of a political boss, he was in the U.S. Senate. As 1945 began he was Vice President, a man struck by political lightning at the Chicago convention while eating a hotdog with mustard...
...Holy Emperors. Until 1868, the Emperor meant little or nothing to the Japanese. Under the 675-year dictatorship of the shoguns (Japan's military overlords), emperors were empty figureheads often cast aside, banished or assassinated at the shoguns' whim. "From the remote island to which he had been relegated, one managed to escape, hidden under a load of fish. Others had to sell autographs for a livelihood. The Emperor Tsuchi II lay unburied for six weeks until his son borrowed the money from Buddhist priests to pay for the funeral expenses...
...opened a haberdashery: it failed. He went into politics, became a county judge (an administrative, not a judicial post). He probably would have remained a minor politician except for a lucky break given him by Kansas City's late Boss Pendergast. In 1934, as a fine magisterial whim, Boss Tom made unknown Harry Truman a U.S. Senator. With Pendergast's control of the state, it was as simple as that. In 1940, Senator Truman won reelection, solely because of a party split and not because of his own record in the Senate, which had been one of hard...
...almost every corporation which can collar an unemployed lawyer can gamble a few thousand dollars with a chance of winning a rebate many times as big. But by the same token the money spent to prepare a claim is likely to be a bet on the whim of a tax official. The lawyers know this, and thus are engaging in an unprecedented amount of paper work. One big company submitted a 900-page rebate claim. Another sent in a 100-page brief but kept a barrel-full of supporting evidence on hand...
...when she meant to write, "Kiss Susy [Twain's daughter] for me," it came out "Kill Susy for me." To which Twain replied: "I said to Livy [his wife], 'It is a hard thing to ask of loving parents, but Ma is getting old and her slightest whim must be our law'; so I called in Downey, and Livy and I held the child with the tears streaming down our faces while he sawed her head...