Word: long-armed
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Dates: during 1947-1947
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...Masters. Just 800 years ago, the hermit's peace was disturbed. The region at that time was under the dominion of a boyar called Stephen Ivanovich Kuchko who had a pretty wife. A neighboring prince, one Yuri Dolgoruki (meaning Long-Arm),*quarreled with the boyar because (at least according to one version) he wanted Kuchko's wife. Long-Arm seized Kuchko's domains, threw a bang-up banquet on what later became Kremlin hill, and decided that this spot-with its roads and rivers crossing in all directions -would be a good place for a town...
...Long-Arm was succeeded by many rival princes, among them Basil the Cross-eyed, who later became Basil the Sightless and Ivan Kalita, called Moneybag, who first gave Moscow something like an ordered economy. The young town was repeatedly overrun by the Golden Horde of Tartars, one of whose reasons for coming back again & again was Moscow's women, much coveted on the world slave markets. Sultan Ahmed I is said to have asked his eldest son one day: "My Osman, wilt thou conquer Crete for me?" Whereupon Osman replied: "What have I to do with Crete? I will...
...Even in those days, the British got around. Long-Arm's mother was an English girl called Gyda, who was the daughter of King Harold. † When it grew too narrow, an outer wall was built around the merchants' quarters, known as Kitai Gorod (or Chinatown), a name picked up from the Tartars. Later, two even larger walls were built-one of white stone (which gave its lame to Bely Gorod, or White Town, where the Czar's servants lived) and a wooden wall (which gave its name to Zemlyanoi Gorod, Wooden Town, for workmen and soldiers...