Word: a-bomb
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...Naval Research Laboratory when a colleague asked him why the lab's Geiger counters had recently been clicking faster after rainstorms. King collected rain water from the roof of N.R.L.'s building, found that it was slightly radioactive, suspected that the activity came from U.S. A-bomb tests in the Pacific about six months before. To make sure, he needed rain water from just after the A-bomb tests-and that meant getting some that could be certified as almost six months old. A Navy commander recalled that in the Virgin Islands most drinking water is in fact...
...that time, the U.S. had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and many experts believed that the Soviet Union would not break the monopoly for many years. Less confident, Peter King set up an unofficial sort of watch for Soviet A-bomb tests. He arranged to have Navy planes bring him once-a-month jugs of rain water from Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska, relatively close to the U.S.S.R. He called his low-key project Operation Rainbarrel...
...have successfully tested an atomic bomb. He sent a rush message-"To hell with the monthly schedule"-for fresh rain water from Kodiak. Within a few hours, he was able to identify radioactive cerium, which could only have come from a nuclear explosion. The U.S. had had no recent A-bomb tests. There was only one possible conclusion-and a few days later, President Harry Truman announced to the world the news, picked up by Peter King's Operation Rainbarrel, that the Russians had broken the U.S. atomic monopoly...
...features for Punch and London's News Chronicle, including a cartoon-strip parody on Hogarth's The Rake's Progress, and illustrations for books and magazines. Now, at 40, Searle is developing his more serious side (he conveniently blew up St. Trinian's with an A-bomb). He prefers to be "something of a roving reporter," recently completed a distinguished book on Europe's refugee camps. As for the Big Four at the summit, he painted each conferee as he saw the man's position, and "put that incredible public-relations man Khrushchev...
...above St. James's Park to watch a cacophonous fireworks display including "The Cross of Lorraine," a "Grand" Girandole of Shells and Mines," and finally, "Ten Signal Aerial Maroons Exploded at a Great Height." Cracked a London newsman: "The explosive power of the demonstration probably equaled one French A-bomb...