Word: albatross
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...than a mile around a figure-eight course. For that feat, unsuccessfully attempted by dozens of others over the previous 18 years, MacCready won a $95,000 prize from British industrialist Henry Kremer. Two years later the same pilot pedaled an improved version of the ephemeral craft, the Gossamer Albatross, all the way across the English Channel to earn MacCready a second Kremer prize...
...Gossamer Condor now hangs in a permanent spot next to the Wright brothers' first airplane at the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum, where the Solar Challenger and the pterodactyl have been displayed. The Smithsonian has also acquired the Gossamer Albatross and the Sunraycer...
...sharp-witted, courtly man who tends toward diffidence, Havel seems an unlikely folk hero. He was the son of a well-to-do builder and restaurateur, and his early years were filled with governesses and chauffeurs. With the Communist takeover in 1948, the family's wealth became an albatross. Havel was denied the opportunity to attend high school or college. While working as a taxi driver and then in a brewery, he pursued his writing and in 1963 saw his first play, The Garden Party, mounted in Prague. In April 1968 Havel traveled to New York to see the Public...
...redemption. The Chicago Cubs are blessed with a beautiful ball park (Wrigley Field) and saddled with a tragic curse: no pennant since 1945. Their old-school manager Don Zimmer carries his own albatross: the memory of squandering an 11 1/2-game lead as skipper of the Boston Red Sox in 1978. But with the Cubs in the lead in the National League East, Zimmer can relax enough to tell his ball club, "If you're not enjoying this, you should get a real job." The mood is infectious, whether it is .300-hitting first baseman Mark Grace describing the pennant race...
...core of their party and the preferences of the moderate voters whose support they need. They cannot abandon the human-life amendment without hell to pay. Now that it matters, they cannot continue to trumpet this extreme position without at least heck to pay. It will be an albatross around their necks. Already it is a pleasure to watch Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican candidate for mayor of New York City, squirm...