Word: ballooned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that saga goes back to 1793, when a debonair Frenchman named Jean Pierre Blanchard ascended from the yard of Philadelphia's Walnut Street prison in a balloon, accompanied by a small, whimpering dog. While President George Washington and hundreds of Philadelphians craned their necks in amazement, Blanchard panicked a squadron of pigeons and drifted nonchalantly out of sight. After 46 minutes in the air, he plopped down in a woodland 15 miles away and placated the scared natives with wine...
...imagination, the 20th century metropolis is an indestructible giant -all those skyscrapers and subways, all that steel, stone and glass, all that raw, corpuscular power. But the modern city, New York included, is really a huge, rubbery shell. In the dead of night it collapses just like a deflated balloon, and each morning it is pumped back to life again, not with air but electricity. As little Reddy Kilowatt-the power companies' coy public-relations name for juice -swarms all over town, subways scuttle, elevators shoot, lamps light, machines sew, write, add, cool, talk, sing and growl...
...square-mile piece of the balloon, running roughly from 43rd Street to 77th Street, collapsed, and for 4½ mad hours, Reddy Kilowatt was blacked out. Seated at a great church organ, the organist laid ten fingers down on a blasting Bachian chord-and lost it. At Vic Tanny's, dozens of reducers stared in blubbery relief as the complicated electrical contraptions halted their pummeling. At the Paramount Theater, where the projectors run on DC current but the sound on AC, Elvis Presley was silenced at last...
...turn on his air conditioner or all the other appliances that help make the city livable. To most New Yorkers, it was simply sobering to think how utterly they can be at the mercy of a couple of large fuses in a power station-and how vulnerable their big balloon really...
...Victor Prather Jr., made a record flight (21.5 mi.) off the U.S.S. Antietam in the Gulf of Mexico, were picked up by a helicopter shortly after their gondola landed in the water. Commander Ross rode a horsecollar sling to safety. Commander Prather, a Navy medical officer on his third balloon ascent, fell from the sling as he was rising to ward the hovering chopper. Dragged under by the weight of his pressure suit, he died soon after a frogman hauled him to the surface...