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Denver was still getting used to being the national seat of government and was not quite happy in the role, like a boy in his first formal evening clothes. Its spirit still yearned for high-heeled boots and its Western twang even though it knew it had to grow up ad be an international metropolis, with embassies and spies and famous gourmet restaurants.

"Appear to be lowly and weak, so as to make them arrogant, then they will not worry about you, and you can attack them as they relax."---Wag Xi

Charles Bean maintained that the fighting in the summer of 1916 " was in some respects the heaviest they ( the Australians) ever experienced."...."the Australian force in France (on the Somme) had in less than seven weeks suffered more than 28,000 casualties." This compared to 26,000 casualties over eight months at Gallipoli the previous year.

February 17, 1945....Another man died this a.m., two yesterday. One went completely off his nut and began to chew on his trousers and belt. I heard he finished his trousers. The gravediggers work overtime. Rescue must come soon!

And that, Schruille thought, is what disturbs me. Svengaard worships us....as does Max. But worship is nine-tenths fear.

Zira was the she-ape's name, as I presently learned. She was the head of the department to which I had been brought.

."...I have studied Mr. Booth in depth. A brilliant actor and dedicated activist...."

In space, motion sickness is more than an unpleasant embarrassment....An entire Soviet mission, Soyuz 10, was aborted due to motion sickness. You'd think science would have it licked by now...

They were hardly any nearer to the North Pole than when they'd first met the ice. They had been "drifting about like a Flying Dutchman," noted De Long in his journal, "thirty-three people wearing out their hearts and souls."

...diamonds that glittered with irised fires or shot forth showers of rainbowed rays; great burning opals; gems burning with amethystine flames; unknown jewels...

The first rule of street fighting is when you get your guy on the ground you finish him, no hesitation, no pause, no inhibition, no gentlemanly conduct. You finish him.

I suppose a Piltdown man, gazing from under his eye-ridges at the face of a Toynbee or an Einstein would realize only very remotely that this was the face of an evolved member of his own species. And there were greater gulfs than that between the Face and me.

...the actor ( Marlon Brando) was allowed to play conga alongside the great timbalero Silvano "El Chori" Echevarria. Later, Brando found and purchased a pair of congas...he was quoted as saying, "I really like Havana..."

Truman opened his campaign on Labor Day, with an energetic one-day tour of Michigan. His special train left Washington on Sunday afternoon; the following morning he was in Grand Rapids...

High on the wind came a brief squeal, and I pointed out to George what looked like a patch of moving snow. A snow leopard, helping to guard the sacred valley.

You would never guess that it ( Bern ) is the national capital. This is partly because of the peculiar nature of Swiss politics. So many powers devolve to the cantons and to national referenda that Switzerland doesn't even feel the need to have a prime minister, and the presidency is such a nominal...position that it changes hands every year.

....I bent down to hug him. In the afternoon light, I could see that the gray flecks of his muzzle had gone to white, and I realized that he had drifted into old age without my having noticed. ( from "Out on the Marsh" by David Updike

Jefferson had a passion for Indian language, believing he would be able to trace the Indians' origins by discovering the basis of their language. So the gathering of vocabularies was an important charge on the captains.

And we discovered one thing: "People always have the kind of government they want...."

In the trenches before Petersburg were...Indians.. One of them was Private Austin George, a Mashantucket Pequot Indian from southeastern Connecticut, who was a member of the Thirty-first United States Colored Infantry ...Some historians have incorrectly assumed that the troops of the U.S. Colored Infantry, as it was officially called, were entirely African Americans. Not so....

Spectaculum carissimum est Insula Gilliganis ( My favorite show is Gilligan's Island)

....cats will do very well in a world without the people who took them to all the continents and islands they didn't already inhabit, where they now outnumber and out-compete other predators their own size. Long after we're gone, songbirds must deal with the progeny of these opportunists that trained us to feed and harbor them..

"...I'd trade it all to have been on Peponi when August Hardwycke first set foot there, when there was a young world spread out before him, all his for the taking."

In her own assessment of the retreat, the Baroness (Frederike von Riedesel ) found General Burgoyne's behavior disgraceful. While his troops waited for orders to continue their withdrawal, the Baroness later claimed. General Burgoyne had neglected his duties by spending the night drinking champagne and making merry with his mistress... General Riedesel told his wife and children to take refuge in a nearby house.

The Byzantines set up their camp with orderly promptitude. Those,Padway thought,were real soldiers. You could accomplish something with men like that to command.

....(Frederic) Remington quickly grew bored....Remington sent a telegram that stated, "Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here ( in Cuba). There will be no war. I wish to return." ( William Randolph ) Hearst replied, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war."

In the fall of 1942, when the Americans attacked Japanese ships off Tarawa,...the Japanese beheaded twenty-two POWs held on that island.

To escape the crowd, Omar entered the Dome of the Rock, where in the half darkness of the painted glass windows there was silence. Here he knelt to pray with his hands upon the gray rock that was only less sacred than the black stone within the sanctuary of Mecca.

The little son of a bitch had a crystal of ice-nine in a thermos bottle in his luggage, and so did his miserable sister, while under us was God's own amount of water, the Caribbean Sea.

...while Icelandic Y chromosomes are predominantly Scandinavian, Icelandic mitochondrial ( female ) DNA is predominantly British. Why the contrast? Because Iceland, especially the west, was largely peopled by Vikings bringing with them women captured from the British Isles. In the east, the Vikings came direct from Scandinavia, and we see more equal proportions of the male and female genes...