Word: 20th
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...usually relegated to a couple of column inches on the inside pages of morning newspapers. From the end of the de facto ten-year moratorium on capital punishment in 1977 through last year, only eleven Americans were put to death legally. Stephens' execution last week, however, was the 20th this year. Not since 1963 have the states executed so many people. Next year the rate of executions seems sure to quicken, perhaps to one a week: by most reckonings, about 50 of the more than 1,400 inmates now on death row will be put to death. "There...
Until the mid-20th century no politician faced such indecent public exposure, expected to answer tough questions instantly without squirming and with seeming candor, under the camera's up-close searching eye. The questions are often prosecutorial: if a politician tells the truth, he may get in trouble; if he tells a lie, he may get into worse trouble; if he waffles, he will be pressed further. The talent to survive is essential to the politician, but detrimental to the man. It has produced a new mutant in the modern political animal-the chummy dissembler-that many people find...
Money made as regal a figure as Jack Nicklaus fling a putter a few weeks back in his alltime display of rapture over an eight-footer, not to win the grand slam, not even to clinch a 20th major championship, but to publicize a condominium development in Arizona at a made-for-TV golf tournament. Ben Hogan would never have wet his pants over such a glory, but there are levels of ego in this. When Bjorn Borg slipped merely to second, ahead of everyone but John McEnroe, Borg had to go. Eleven years removed from his No. 1 rating...
...early decades of the 20th century, farmers had few pesticides at their disposal more effective than arsenates to protect their crops from insect depredations. During World War II, German and Allied laboratories produced complex and lethal chemical compounds, including DDT and lindane. Since then new generations of pesticides such as carbamates (Bux Ten, Furadan and Mobam) have proved to be efficient at curbing insects and microscopic pests without producing the strong toxic effects of DDT on the environment. At the same time, however, these new silent killers still pose a potential threat to other forms of life, including human...
...more recent years, except for occasional forays into furniture, architects have tended to confine their visions to larger structures. Their buildings, however, may be the very reason for the new venture in accouterments. R. Craig Miller, the Metropolitan's 20th century design associate curator, suggests that the architects are prompted by "a need for new furnishings to make postmodern interiors complete...