Word: whims
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...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...
...Kiepura, star of the Manhattan revival of The Merry Widow, as a patriotic whim sings an out-of-show Polish folk song in the middle of the performance. When a visiting Polish Pestka (WAC) was moved to tears, a portly, white-haired man seated beside her spoke sympathetically: "I expect Poland to be free again." After the show he stopped the Pestka, shook her hand, urged: "Keep your chin up." Gratefully, she asked if she might know his name. "Of course. It's Hoover-Herbert Hoover...
Fate. No mere whim but something more like destiny had whisked the Generals from Cairo to the arid heart of the Middle East. Aboard the transport they had stowed 3,000 lb. of pretty things: automatic rifles, ammunition, blowtorches, helmets, other samples of freshly arrived Lend-Lease for Ibn Saud...