Word: alloy
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Since the 19th century, science and industry have honored a holy of holies: a bar of platinum-iridium alloy, triple-locked in a subbasement at Sèvres on the outskirts of Paris. Near the ends of the bar were engraved two microscopically thin lines, and the distance between them was exactly one meter-by international agreement, the world standard of measurement. Around the globe, other countries had copies of the bar at Sèvres, and their traditional units of length-feet (3.28 to a meter), versts, li, or whatever -were defined by reference to it. But last week...
...drop of water, the features of the Soviet way of life are reflected." The youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda took lyric flight: "Through the stormy night, battling in Stygian darkness across the thundering ocean, four simple Soviet lads bore aloft the torch of bravery. Soviet people are a special alloy!" One Russian correspondent breathlessly reported that not once during their ordeal had any of the four said a harsh word to another. Pravda could not resist contrasting this with the despair, terror, "fears and sorrowful prayers" left behind in the diary of the missing World War II U.S. bomber crew whose...