Word: acrid
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Like a merry-go-round pony suddenly gone berserk, Blue Boy bellowed with rage and bucketed across the arena. Spinning, rearing, kicking up clouds of acrid dust, the wild-eyed horse struggled to un seat its rider. The violent ballet lasted just ten seconds. Then a klaxon sounded and McLean vaulted gracefully to the ground. The judges' verdict: 171 out of a possible 210 points...
...with calm and self-assurance-and for jood reason. When attacked by a ferocious ant, its natural enemy, the bombardier beetle (Brachinus) merely stands its ground, pushes a flexible tube from its rear end and points it at the enemy. With a small but audible bang, a cloud of acrid vapor envelops the ant, reducing it to paralysis or trembling confusion. Until recently, the bombardier beetle's efficient defensive weapon was pretty much of a mystery. Entomologists thought that it simply squirted out a liquid that exploded on hitting the air. But in West Germany's Angewandte Chemie...
Each of the paired cannons, he found, has glands that discharge a fluid into a saclike reservoir. Using his best microtechniques, Dr. Schildknecht next analyzed the fluid and found to his amazement that it was about 10% hydroquinone and toluhydroquinone (acrid compounds related to carbolic acid) and 23% hydrogen peroxide. When mixed in a test tube these chemicals reacted spontaneously, giving off copious gas, but something still unknown keeps them from reacting as long as they lie undisturbed in the beetle's ammunition sacs...
...Negro Freedom Rider Charles Person, 18. "The atmosphere was tense." Outside Anniston, the first stop in Alabama, whites who had been pursuing in cars caught up with the Freedom Riders. An incendiary bomb was hurled through a broken window, setting the bus afire. "The bus soon filled with black, acrid smoke," recalls Freedom Rider Bigelow. "We had to get out somehow-there was no chance at all of surviving inside." The waiting toughs beat up some of the Freedom Riders who emerged first, but police then fired pistols into the air, and the mob drew back. Ambulances took the Freedom...
...this acrid atmosphere, the committee could only play it safe. It recommended immediate, intensified efforts to get Salk shots into young children and young adults, the two most vulnerable age groups. Dr. Sabin won a grudging endorsement: "The PHS should continue to make every effort to encourage the early production and ready availability of an oral polio vaccine." Best estimates were that it would not be ready much before next winter-too late to take effect in the peak polio months...