Word: 20th
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...Tour de France, which kicks off July 5, is a grueling test of human endurance, a three-week 2,175mile (3,500 km) race stretched over 21 stages, nine of them in the mountains. But in some ways the modern Tour is easier than races past. In the early 20th century, competitors pedaled the dirt roads of France through the night on fixed-gear bikes, evading human blockades, route-jamming cars and nails placed on the road by fans of other riders. Between stages, teams feasted on banquets and champagne; before climbs, they fortified with cigarettes...
...release of a handful of other hostages this year. The Uribe government accuses Chávez of funding the FARC, which the U.S. lists as a terrorist organization. Last month Chávez urged the rebels to disband, calling their brand of guerrilla insurgency, a hemispheric staple of the 20th century, "out of place" in the 21st century...
...Aksakov family - literati who turned their home into an informal salon for the Russian intellectual gentry. As a dear friend of the Aksakovs, Gogol was a frequent and honored guest in Abramtsevo, now a museum and a major Russian landmark of Russian cultural history - early in the 20th century, its new owners, the Mamontovs, turned the estate into an artist colony whose output contributed greatly to the Moscow Tretyakov Gallery, Russia's national art collection. It was in the Aksakovs' Abramtsevo that Gogol first read aloud to a narrow circle of cognoscenti chapters chapters from his never-to-be-completed...
Like everything else Ando does, this building calls to mind the delicacy and simplicity of traditional Japanese architecture. That he achieves that effect with concrete is the ever charming paradox of his work. But in that way, his buildings bear the mark of two 20th century Modernists he admires, Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, who found in concrete an opportunity for blunt majesty and even a kind of lyricism. The minimalist Modernism that Ando practices may not be in vogue these days. But in the right hands, it still works wonders...
...modern U.S. school year, which averages 180 days, has its critics too. Some experts say its languorous summer break, which took hold in the early 20th century, is one of the reasons math skills and graduation rates of U.S. high schoolers ranked well below average in two international-education reports issued in 2007. Others insist that with children under mounting pressure to devote their downtime to internships or study, there's still room for an institution that sanctifies the lazy days of childhood...