Word: alarmism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Tera River, swollen by a fortnight of rain, was held in check by a stone and concrete dam built two years ago. The only explanation of the now deafening thunder was that the dam had burst. Electrician Rey scrambled up the church tower, began ringing the bell in alarm. Father Plácido started waking his neighbors. Some few fled with him across the only bridge and climbed the opposite hillside. Others raced to the church tower or to high ground...
...race for prestige and achievement in space, these complicated virtues have their drawbacks, however temporary. Said German Scientist Hermann Oberth, who had worked on the U.S. missile program: "The Russian rockets remind me of simple alarm clocks-you can throw them on the wall and they'll keep on ticking. American missiles are like expensive ladies' wrist watches that look nice but tend to stop frequently." An old missile hand at Cape Canaveral turned to a football figure. The Russians, said he, are now leading in moon shots by 7 to 6-they have converted after the touchdown...
...flying stone and dust like miniature volcanoes. Screaming men and women ran bloodily from the caves, dragging with them other workers who had been knocked unconscious. Groping through the thick fog, slipping on the wet clay topsoil, they screamed for help. The village priest and the schoolteacher spread the alarm, and fare brigades soon arrived from the Belgian cities of Hasselt and Tongres. and from the nearby Dutch city of Maastricht. They saw with horror that the hill was still moving convulsively, with craters 10 ft. wide appearing in the earth...
From an educator not given to easy alarm crying, the U.S. this week got stern reproof for a widespread educational failure. Said longtime (1933-53) Harvard President James B. Conant: more than a year's close study of U.S. high schools has left him much less concerned with programs in mathematics and science than with a "most distressing situation" in the teaching of foreign languages. Conant's bluntly-worded report: "In school after school only two years of any language were offered ... I submit that to study a language for two years, even two languages for two years...
...have brought some surprising changes in unions. John L. Lewis, who once could stir up a national crisis with a strike threat from his mighty, 600,000-strong Mine Workers union, is now the boss of a union shrunk to 200,000, and seldom gives cause for alarm. In steel the white-collar percentage in the working force has doubled since 1942 to 18% or 20%, will go up to 33% by 1970. In chemicals it rose from 24% in 1947 to 36% in 1957, will hit 50% by 1968. In all U.S. manufacturing, it has climbed from...