Word: oldest
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...Ronald Reagan, the oldest ex-President ever...
Walk north on Second Street, and you will hit Elfreth's Alley, believed to be the oldest residential street in the U.S. You may notice tiny mirrors jutting from the top floors. Called busy-body mirrors, these contraptions, which enable people to see who is coming down the street, were brought back from Holland by Franklin. Also look out for black iron plaques that depict four fists locked in the fire fighter's carry. These plaques indicated that a house was insured against fire, insurance being one of Franklin's imports from London...
...nudism in America. Membership in A.A.N.R. has climbed from about 40,000 a decade ago to nearly 50,000 today. A tourism official in Pasco County, Fla., says more than 100,000 tourists a year visit its five nudist resorts, of which Lake Como, founded in 1947, is the oldest. In 1992, Forbes estimated nudism to be a $120 million-a-year industry. A.A.N.R. claims that with all the nudist resorts, clothing-optional cruises (seven this year) and other enterprises (there was a nude passenger flight to Cancun not long ago), the figure is nearing $400 million...
...DIED. STROM THURMOND, 100, oldest and longest-serving Senator in U.S. history; in Edgefield, South Carolina. In a political career that spanned seven decades, Thurmond ran unsuccessfully for President in 1948, won eight terms in the Senate, and held the record for the longest speech on the Senate floor?24 hours and 18 minutes?against a 1957 civil-rights bill to end segregation in housing. In later years, Thurmond dropped his segregationist views but remained controversially conservative...
...promoters still call them jazz festivals. While Europe's love for improvised music remains strong, the festival business is getting tougher as competition stiffens, artists' fees rise, and government subsidies fade. Is this all too much of a good thing? Jan Ole Otnes, the director of Europe's oldest jazz fest - the Molde Jazz Festival, in Norway - thinks it is. Just 10 years ago there were only four summer jazz festivals in the country; now there are more than a dozen, and Otnes says "a lot of them have lost their special character." Not his, of course: from July...