In the 17th century an ingenious smoker came up with the pipe tamper, or stopper, as it's known in England, a tool for pressing down lit tobacco in the pipe's bowl.

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The dome will resemble an inverted funnel, with a pipe leading up to ships waiting at the surface that would take away the oil.

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Back on land, mining-company engineers say new techniques, such as dissolving minerals and sucking them up through a pipe or extracting ore with high-powered water jets, could increase recoverable reserves.

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For days, officers communicated with Dykes through a plastic pipe that rose up from the bunker, which was similar to a tornado shelter and apparently had running water, heat and cable television.

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The mermaid's intricate tresses, crowned with a garland of flowers, flow back to meet up with her finely wrought fish tail and the pipe's amber stem.

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The ancient, all-of-a-piece jumble of khaki fieldstone buildings, wooden shutters and half-pipe roof tiles is as spruced up as a resort these days, with no graffiti in sight or tumbled ruins or paving stones out of place.

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The council is in contact with Thames Water to establish whether the pipe can be dug up.

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