Word: oldest
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...full name was William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman, but to 1.5 million Liberians he was simply "Old Daddy." As President for 27 years of the Ohio-size West African rubber republic, he was the oldest, established, permanent, doting, elected patriarch on the continent. Indeed, so popular was Old Daddy with his subjects that the only thing that could oust him from office was death. The ouster came last week, when the 75-year-old President succumbed to complications following a prostate-gland operation in a London hospital...
Despite the comic-opera façade, however, Tubman made some substantial contributions to Africa's oldest independent black state. His rule was characterized by both stability and a medicum of physical progress. By means of education and arm-twisting, Tubman did all he could to wipe out the differences between native tribesmen and the elitist Americo-Liberians (descendants of Liberia's freed-slave founders...
Disunity remains the major problem of the ABT, the nation's oldest ballet troupe. Its star performers are second to none. Trouble is, there are almost as many styles as dancers, and more often than not, productions have a slightly underrehearsed look. Its secondary leads, and particularly the corps, vary from good to "good grief." When Natalia Makarova-the dazzling Russian defector who formerly starred with Leningrad's Kirov Ballet-floats to her forest glade in Swan Lake, the ragged corps resembles a Long Island duck farm rather than anything 19th century Choreographer Marius Petipa had in mind...
...Died. Prince Franz Joseph Maria La-moral, 78, who as Duke of Thurn and Taxis was Germany's wealthiest nobleman and the patriarch of one of Europe's oldest families; of a heart attack; in Regensburg, West Germany. The godson of Austrian Emperor Franz Josef and titular head of the clan that introduced the international postal system to Europe in the 16th century, the prince presided over a billion-dollar financial empire that includes Germany's third biggest private bank and vast stretches of latifundia in Bavaria, Canada and Brazil. One of the last Continental nobles...
Died. Admiral Thomas C. Hart, 94, commander in chief of the U.S. Asiatic fleet at the outbreak of World War II; of pneumonia; in Sharon, Conn. Having seen action in both the Spanish-American War and World War I, Tommy Hart became the oldest admiral afloat when F.D.R. extended his tour of duty past the mandatory retirement age of 64. Convinced that war was imminent, Hart kept the principal warships based in Manila Bay out of the harbor, avoiding another Pearl Harbor. Forced to move his headquarters south to Java, Hart commanded the outnumbered Americans in the three-day battle...