Word: basement
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first few days, Jones was kept upstairs in the embassy residence. Then he and about 25 other hostages were moved to the windowless basement, which they nicknamed the Mushroom...
...could not get back in: 6,000 people were trying to get into a room that was far too small for so many. Tempers flared at many points in the evening. Said Bob Hope, surveying the scene at the Kennedy Center ball: "It looks like Macy's basement out there...
Mock executions carried out by white-masked "firing squads" that clicked rifle bolts behind the backs of hostages spread-eagled against a wall. Iranian guards playing Russian roulette with revolvers held to the heads of two bound American women. Prisoners confined in basement cells where they were prevented from seeing sunlight for months, forced to sleep for weeks in the clothes they were wearing when captured, denied baths for as long as three months, afraid even to look at each other because their captors thought they might be exchanging eye signals...
...capture, said Queen, several of the hostages were held in small rooms at the embassy, while others were led blindfolded through streets filled with mobs screaming for their death. Two weeks after the takeover, many of the hostages were herded into the "Mushroom Inn," their nickname for the windowless basement of the main embassy building, which their captors had divided into small rooms to serve as cells. The hostages' hands were bound, and some were forced to sit for as long as 16 hours a day, facing blank walls. Queen was imprisoned with a roommate, Joseph Hall...
Little was heard of nuclear power over the next 15 years. Careful observers may have picked up some rumblings of discontent from bearded scientists. Careful consumers probably noticed that the meter in the basement was not just spinning, but accelerating. But such is not the province of the news magazines...