Word: infestation
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...northwest coast of Australia is one of the most desolate spots on earth. The nearest city of any size is Perth (pop. 376,000), some 1,450 miles to the south; mosquitoes and crocodiles infest the mangrove swamps; 12-ft. sharks cruise the lonely bays. In that unfriendly land, at remote Kuri Bay, a syndicate of Australians, Americans and Japanese called Pearls Proprietary Ltd. is turning out a product that has the world's jewelers agog. The product: fabulous pearls as big across as a 25-cent piece, of gem quality so fine that a Manhattan jeweler recently sold...
...diem, could hardly be called downtrodden. (Nor could John L. Lewis, still the $50,000-per-year U.M.W. president and a power in the National Bank of Washington as well.) The concern of Congress and of the U.S. in 1959 is the gangsterism and brutality that infest the unions and threaten the working man. With oratory and belligerence out of the past, John L. Lewis was fighting for a cause already won, defending a crime against labor still unpunished...
...President of 1,000 Murders." Martí had predicted that "rascals will struggle to infest politics." After the administration, of First President Tomás Estrada Palma (1902-06), who died in poverty, Cuba never knew an honest President. No. 2 retired to a $250,000 mansion; No. 3 parlayed $1,000,000 into $30 million to $40 million; No. 4 was known as "the peseta stealer." No. 5, Gerardo ("The Butcher") Machado (1925-33), coupled graft with terror, rode in a $30,000 armored car, had some of his victims fed to the sharks. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dispatched...
...sprawling Republic of Indonesia-a nation of hundreds of islands and 80 million people-moves into its tenth year of independence, its existence remains precarious. Some 10,000 rebels still infest the outer islands. In Sumatra 14 rubber plantations have been put to the torch in a single month. The gold backing for the printing-press currency is down to 7.85%, although the legal minimum is supposed to be 20%. Factories and industrial plants are operating at scarcely 60% of capacity because foreign exchange is lacking for raw materials and spare parts...
...special niche in American folklore. Depending on the circumstances, he ranks midway between the riverboat cardsharp and the village idiot, part freebooting buccaneer and part plain boob; or he appears, armed with screwdriver and flashlight, as a latter-day St. George riding heroically against the dragons that infest the nation's drain traps and fuse boxes. In commuter cars, at cocktail parties and women's clubs, he is the center of a game of "Can you top this?"-an endless recital of domestic triumphs and defeats. The plumber who forgets his tools is legendary; now, says one pained...