Then they shall deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.
—Matt. 24:9
959 Cruelty To Prawns
In England, Eleanor Donoghy, 16, faced criminal charges in a British court for cruelty to prawns. Her crime was to fry the shrimp-like creatures to death instead of boiling them. Her case has so confused the court that it adjourned for nearly two months so that experts could decide such fundamental questions as “what is cruelty?” and even “what is a prawn?”
Miss Donoghy worked at a fish processing plant near Berwick in the north of England. Her job was to dump prawns into boiling water as part of the process that turns them into scampi. Instead, her workmates alleged, she put prawns into a hot stove and watched as they “jumped about in agony” until they died. Her colleagues reported her to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She denied the charge but if convicted, faces a maximum fine of $115 or three months in jail.
960 Rockefeller’s One Last Fling
Michael Clark Rockefeller, a graduate cum laude from Harvard, determined on one last fling at something romantic and adventurous. He wanted to film actual tribal warfare in New Guinea. The adventure according to Time magazine, meant “seven deaths and a dozen or more wounded” in one area. Dutch officials were alarmed. One reported:
Michael’s presence led to tremendous increase in local trade, especially in beautifully painted human heads. A few weeks ago members of the head-hunter tribe approached the area administrator for permission to go head-hunting “for one evening only, please, sir.” This was because Michael was offering ten steel hatchets for one head. “We had to warn him off, as he was creating demand that could not be met without bloodshed.”
Michael was last seen by a companion anthropologist as he plunged into shark-infested waters, desperate to make shore on the southern coast of New Guinea. Governor Rockefeller flew a specially chartered jet to search for the lost son.
961 Who Should Be Caged?
Detroit’s zoo director hired four new security guards—to protect the animals from man.
In the past two years there, a baby Australian wallaby left the protection of its mother’s pouch and was stoned to death; a duck died with a steel-tipped hunting arrow in its breast; a pregnant reindeer miscarried after firecracker-hurling youths bombed the frantic animal into convulsions. Visitors have dropped lighted cigar butts on the backs of alligators, laughing at the reptiles’ reactions as the ashes burn through their skin. Finally, the zoo’s male hippopotamus choked to death when someone responded to his open-mouthed begging for peanuts by rolling a tennis ball down his throat.
The zookeepers wonder: Who should be caged?
—Time
962 Japanese Food Treatment
It was reported that in some Japanese concentration camps “food” was served. But what was offered daily was a mixture. There was a certain amount of grain, meal or rice, so that if anyone asked, it can be said that enough basic food was in it to prevent starvation. But one by one people starved.
Secret: Castor oil was mixed with the food and the food would be expelled from the body before much nourishment could be absorbed into the system.
963 Why “Alex” Ran Away
In Cleveland, a Mrs. Alexander Nelson sued her husband for divorce on grounds of desertion. Alexander admitted that he deserted her and gave his reasons. Apparently Mrs. Nelson had gone to the city pound and got a mongrel pooch, a shaggy, ugly animal, and named it after her husband. She baptized the dog Alex.
“Every once in a while,” he testified. “she’d call “Alex, Alex,” and when I would say “What?” she would snap back, “Oh, I don’t mean you, I was calling for the other animal.”” And so Alex—the husband, not the dog—left home. The court granted the divorce without alimony.
964 Picking On Dr. Jowett
A guide was showing some American tourists through Oxford. “I’d like to see Jowett’s study,” said one of them. “You know, the fellow who translated Plato.” “Easiest thing in the world,” said the guide, and led his party to a cloistered square nearby. “That open window on the second floor, my friends, is Mr. Jowett’s diggings. Would you like to see the Professor himself?”
The Americans assured him that they would like nothing better. The guide thereupon picked up a sizable rock and hurled it with deadly accuracy through Jowett’s open window. A moment later a face purple with rage appeared in the apperture. “Aha!” said the guide triumphantly. “That always gets him. There’s the old boy himself!”
965 The Coliseum
The Roman Coliseum was started by Emperor Vespasian and completed by his son Titus, destroyer of Jerusalem. It could accommodate 85,000 on its eighty-acre site. It is shaped like an ellipse and rises to 160 feet high.
Inside the edifice were tiers upon tiers of stone benches. And under the lowest tier were the dens of the wild beasts which were caught from all over the known world. Side by side with the beasts, were the gloomy caverns where prisoners and martyrs spent last hours before being thrust into the open arena to fight and die. Gushing fountains cooled the air and aromatics diffused a pleasant odor to offset that of the wild beasts.
The coliseum was dedicated in AD 80 by Emperor Titus, when over five thousand wild beasts were slain in the games. It stands as a crowning indictment of the pagan civilization which reached its climax in these bloody spectacles.
966 Man’s Inhumanity To Man
Crasus, after the revolt of Spartacus, crucified 10,000 slaves at one time. Augustus, for a political offence, delivered 30,000 to their masters, to be executed. Trajan made 10,000 fights in the amphitheatre, for amusement, the slaughter lasting 123 days.
967 Roman Gladiators’ Diet
The Roman gladiators were fed on a succulent diet for some weeks previous to their exhibition, in order that their veins, being full, might bleed more freely, for the greater gratification of the spectators!
—Newman Hall
968 Epigram On Cruelty
• Find a cruel man and you see a coward.
—Ancient Proverb
See also: Fierce ; Persecution ; Heb. 11:37; Rev. 11:9.