Word: whiz
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Look at the Lampoon," she told the United Press, "If it isn't the saddest idea of a magazine I Don't know what is. Why it's only a pale copy of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang...
...hearty man, full of rough good humor, Captain Billy was a veteran of two wars, knew a lot of bawdy jokes and enjoyed telling them. To amuse his customers he started writing them down on a mimeographed sheet, named it Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. Salesmen, bellhops, race-track followers, schoolboys began to buy it, a printer agreed to bring it out as a monthly magazine, and Whiz Bang suddenly shot off like the shell it was named...
...four years Whiz Bang soared to a circulation of 425,000, brought Captain Billy close to $500,000 a year. Then its trajectory turned earthward again: by 1930 it was down to 150,000, in 1932 it folded. Meanwhile, with his profits Captain Billy started True Confessions, Screen Play, Modern Mechanix, Smokehouse Monthly, For Men, Amateur Golfer & Sportsman, various others. But Whiz Bang was his darling. Wherever he went while Whiz Bang lasted Captain Billy picked up ribald jokes, sent them back with his monthly editorial, Drippings from the Fawcett...
Last week Mr. Hoover had a whiz of a plot. Its characters were mostly people in the swarming ruck of New York City: an elevator mechanic, a telegraph office clerk, a baker, a telephone linesman, a chauffeur, a power company clerk, a tailor, a correspondence school salesman. Some belonged to the Army and Navy reserves or the National Guard; one was a captain. The props included twelve Springfield rifles, 3,500 rounds of ammunition reportedly stolen from National Guard armories, one long sword, 18 cans of cordite powder, a collection of soup and beer cans with accessories for turning them...