Word: weed
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...French Ambassador to Lisbon in 1561, Diplomat Jean Nicot failed in his mission to marry off Queen Catherine de Medici's daughter to the King of Portugal. But Nicot won royal favor all the same by picking up in Lisbon an American weed whose most important ingredient today bears his name: nicotine. Ground into snuff, the tobacco successfully cured Queen Catherine of incessant headaches -it made her sneeze hard enough to clear out her sinuses...
Last week, still as enthused as Cather ine, the French government opened twelve months of festivities commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Nicot's weed in France. As troubadours sang the glories of smoking to an audience of 800, the organizers of the meeting proudly an nounced the creation of a new chivalrous order of tobacco lovers - "The Compan ions of Jean Nicot," whose members will be entitled to wear a lapel ribbon just like chevaliers of the Legion of Honor...
...properly, is a real and meaningful form of service to the country, and as such it should be considered an alternative to the armed forces. If draft-dodging is what is feared, any effective selection process (and a good one is essential if the program is to work) will weed out the draft dodgers, and anyway most lazy people would prefer six months in the Army to two years teaching school in tropical Africa...
Allsopp's inspiration came when he noticed that the manatees in the Georgetown Botanic Gardens nibbled their pool so clean of weeds that they had to be fed large quantities of grass. So he put two manatees in a weed-grown irrigation canal 22 ft. wide and nearly a mile long. In 17 weeks they had it clear and kept it that way. Allsopp figured that each of the manatees consumed more than 100 lbs. of forage...
...fishermen to net the harmless beasts gently (despite their 8-ft. length, manatees are easily bruised or drowned) in the jungle rivers, and he rigged a laboratory truck with a sort of canvas bath to carry them to the ditches. He now has 31 at work, happily chewing water weeds throughout the colony, and 65 more have been ordered from the fishermen. Inquiries about manatees as ditch cleaners have come from Thailand, Ceylon, Malaya and other weed-bothered tropical countries...