Word: furs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This week German civilians went to their cinemas and saw newsreels of winter on the Russian Front. They saw carloads of woolen socks and greatcoats rolling to the front through snow-covered countryside. They saw German sappers building wooden camps frankly labeled Winter Quarters, German tailors fitting fur jackets to tank crews, German kitchen police getting water by chopping holes in ice, German greaseballs sweeping snow off the wings of fighter planes...
...individual Americans have so directly or so powerfully influenced the history and development of so vast a region-and few have been so completely forgotten-as Henry Shreve, Mississippi keelboatman, who, by the time he was 35: 1) broke Pittsburgh's monopoly of the fur trade; 2) broke Canada's monopoly of the Western lead trade; 3) broke the Livingston-Fulton monopoly of steamboating on the Mississippi with his shallow-draught, double-deck river steamboat; 4) made navigation safe by inventing a snag-pulling boat with which he cleared some 1,500 miles of river; 5) opened...
...Fur and tobacco were St. Louis' money...
...took 40 days from Pittsburgh to St. Louis; it took longer being towed back. The Pittsburgh middlemen squinted at Shreve's furs, offered him small change. Ignoring the tradition that Pittsburgh middlemen monopolized the fur trade with the East, Shreve loaded his furs on wagons, carted them over the snowy Alleghenies to Philadelphia, where he sold them at a fat profit...
...Major General Charles H. Bonesteel, formerly in command of the Fifth Division. His force, complete from infantry to ordnance units, is equipped with everything from Garand semi-automatic rifles to fighter planes, telephone poles to cement mixers. Well-secured against Iceland weather, each of his men has been issued fur caps, wool-lined mackinaws, heavy galoshes, gloves, five pairs of shoes, heavy underclothes and socks in addition to regular work clothes and uniforms. Each soldier also has a pair of skis and snowshoes...