Word: 1940s
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...1940s, America was confronted with a fateful choice. In the chaos of the postwar world, should it return to the familiar isolationism that would insulate it from dangers abroad? Or should it continue to intervene in world affairs with the awesome power at its disposal? The U.S. chose the activist path, and the man who embodied that choice was Dean Gooderham Acheson, first as an influential Assistant and Under Secretary of State and then as Secretary. Every step that Dean Acheson took was dogged by criticism, and it is a measure of the man that, when he died last week...
Most Americans are openly proud of the fact that they work fewer hours and earn more money than workers any where else in the world. Yet until recently they have trailed the labor forces of many industrialed nations in one surprising respect: vacations. Until the late 1940s, the typical male U.S. employee enjoyed no more than a six-day holiday annually. Since then, his time off has been increased to about three weeks (v. two weeks for women, who tend to change jobs more frequently and thus accumulate less seniority). But some European workers have had paid vacations...
...just over a month ago is hardly surprising. The measure requires that when the present concessions expire, beginning in 1983, improvements will revert to the state without compensation to the companies. Such a provision was written into the 40-year leases signed by the oil companies in the early 1940s, but the new law may force them to give up more than they expected to. By its terms, the companies could be required to give up not only concession land and all the equipment on it but also other facilities located outside the concession areas, including refineries, chemical plants, offices...
Jean Bartel, Miss America 1943, became a Broadway singer, but will probably be best remembered for her patriotism. In the year following her crowning, she sold more than $2,500,000 worth of war bonds. In the late 1940s she did a little CIA work in Lebanon. The most famous Miss America is undoubtedly New York City's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs, Bess Myerson Grant, who put a little too much truth in packaging at the 1945 pageant by tucking her 36-in. bust into a size 34 swimsuit. The most infamous beauty, alas, came from the pageant...
...showed a gift for the facile parallel. The Americans started guerrilla warfare, he declared at one point. "George Washington started it." He likened Vietnamization to what he called "China-ization," U.S. support for Chiang Kai-shek in his resistance to Mao Tse-tung's revolution in the late 1940s. But Chou conceded that "America has its merits. It was composed of peoples of all nations and this gave it an advantage of the gradual accumulation of the wisdom of different countries...