On August 26, 1980, some men wearing jumpsuits drove up in a white Dodge van and rolled a large box into a Casino in Stateline Nevada, saying that they were delivering a copy machine. It wasn’t a copy machine. Thus began what the Federal Bureau of Investigation described as “one of the most unusual cases” in the bureau’s history.
In 1943 the Yorktown, Virginia, Naval Mine Depot manufactured explosive ordnance and loaded it onto ships in the York River bound for the battlefields of WWII. On November 16th, a massive explosion rocked the Depot, leaving enormous craters and shattering glass for miles around.
A ‘collective noun’ is a noun used to refer to a group of things as a whole–simple ones include a “group”, a “flock”, or a “pack”. The English language especially, however, has a tradition of whimsical, comical, or absurd names for specific groups of things.