Word: anciently
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Because its red sandstone ramparts rise 200 ft. above the tide line, in contrast to the sandy flatness of all other islands off Germany's northeast coast, the roost of Lieut. Colonel Schumacher and his merry men was called Hillige ("Holy") Land by the ancient Frisians. Britain took it from Denmark and later traded it to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar. In 1914-18 Helgoland, as an advanced fleet base, fortified and protected by mine fields, gave Britain so much trouble that she afterwards insisted upon dismantling it. Her engineers spent three years blowing up its forts and moles...
Entomologists have occasionally found ancient insects beautifully preserved in hunks of amber, which is fossilized natural resin. It occurred to Dr. Sando that if a suitable substance could be found, the same sort of thing could be done deliberately. After much experiment he chose Plexiglas, a mixture of monomers (methyl methacrylate, ethyl methacrylate, etc.) which hardens into a glassy plastic. In blocks of this stuff he immured small dead frogs, a tarantula, the bones of a human hand (see cuts); a rattlesnake's head, complete with fangs, a peacock feather, an iridescent butterfly, a garter snake, flowers, ears...
This ambition to restore ancient geographical names went even deeper. About 40 years ago, the Finnish people resolved among themselves that they would abolish all foreign names of their families, substituting therefor the ancient family names of their forefathers. It was agreed that on a given day, all Swedish and foreign family names would be dumped into the discard and their ancient family names, which had prevailed for centuries, should be restored. This program, carried out with terrible Finnish efficiency prevailed in spite of the chaotic situations developed thereby...
...most ancient fossil humans known are Sinanthropus pekinensis, the old man of China, and Pithecanthropus erectus, the ape man of Java. Their ages have been variously put at 400,000 to 1,000,000 years. First Pithecanthropus relics were found in Java by a Dutchman, Eugene Dubois, in 1892. First good Sinanthropus specimen was discovered in the Choukoutien caves near Peking...
...Koenigswald found a second Pithecanthropus skull in Java, resembling the Dubois skull "as closely as one egg another." He discovered a third in 1938, a fourth in 1939, including the first good piece of an upper jawbone. Now that several good specimens of each ancient type were available, Weidenreich and Koenigswald got together and wrote a joint article for the British journal Nature, which last week reached the eager hands of U. S. anthropologists...