Word: 20th
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lean figure of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini towered malignly over the globe. As the leader of Iran's revolution he gave the 20th century world a frightening lesson in the shattering power of irrationality, of the ease with which terrorism can be adopted as government policy. As the new year neared, 50 of the American hostages seized on Nov. 4 by a mob of students were still inside the captured U.S. embassy in Tehran, facing the prospect of being tried as spies by Khomeini's revolutionary courts. The Ayatullah, who gave his blessing to the capture, has made impossible...
Berg, Lulu (Deutsche Grammophon, 4 LPs, 1979). With the completion of the third act by Friedrich Cerha, a masterpiece of 20th century opera stands fully revealed at last...
...mullahs or Khomeini's son Seyyed Ahmed, about 35, handle all the calls; the Ayatullah does not deign to use this modern invention. That disdain could well stand as a symbol of the Ayatullah's whole rule, which aims at creating, to ward the end of the 20th century, a modern version of his ideal 7th century state. In one sense he has succeeded: Iran is undoubtedly the only major nation that is ruled by a mystic philosopher-king sitting cross-legged on the floor of a bare room in a dusty provincial town...
DIED. Darryl Zanuck, 77, imperious production chief at 20th Century-Fox for 35 years and a thousand films; of pneumonia; in Palm Springs, Calif. The cigar-chomping, polo-playing mogul got his Hollywood break when Warner Bros, hired him as a $250-a-week scenarist for Rin Tin Tin. In four years he was head of production at 20 times that salary. Warner's Wunderkind brought dialogue to feature films (The Jazz Singer, 1927) and pioneered such realistic genres as the gangster and "working gal" films. In 1933 Zanuck and United Artists Head Joseph M. Schenck formed 20th Century...
DIED. Peggy Guggenheim, 81, American-born patroness of 20th century art; following a stroke; in Camposampiero, Italy. Seven years after losing her father on the Titanic in 1912, Peggy came into her share of the Guggenheim copper fortune and departed for the bohemia of Paris and London. She flamboyantly dallied with writers and artists: two became her husbands (including Painter Max Ernst), many her lovers (including Playwright Samuel Beckett). Bored and between husbands in 1938, she began to collect art, later and anonymously sponsor young artists, adopting the motto "Buy a painting a day." When the Louvre declared...