Word: ben
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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During the same month the Pudding celebrated its 80th year with a show called '"76," an historical satire hailed as the best show since the war, the Revolutionary War, that in. In town, Catherine Cornell was starring in "The Green Hat" and Ben Hur showed before packed houses...
...awake, suddenly aware of a strange hissing noise coming from the giant hydraulic catapult mechanism on the deck just over his head. He was hardly out of bed before he felt the soft concussion of a flash-fire explosion, then the rending blast of a second that shook Big Ben from stem to stern...
...make matters worse. Big Ben's powerful ventilating system began to pump explosive fumes and heavy smoke through the ship. As far down as the sixth deck, the blast jammed the airtight doors. The eight men on duty in damage control put wet rags over their faces and went about their critical work of relaying messages from the bridge to the fire fighters, as their oxygen supply dwindled. "This is my last breath," one of them gasped over his headset-and it was. With agonizing slowness, rescue parties cut through the wreckage...
...Ben was 75 miles south of Newport when she took the explosion at 6:20 a.m.-on the way from refitting in Norfolk to her home base at Quonset Point, R.I. As soon as the alarm was flashed ashore, the Quonset Point Naval Air Station rounded up all helicopters in the area and began a ship-to-shore ambulance service. Fires were under control by 8, but as the carrier glided up Narragansett Bay at 12:30 p.m. for her homecoming, rescue parties were still prowling through the blackened compartments, and the dead, shrouded in white blankets, were spaced across...
...week's end, the dead numbered 99, the critically injured 30, the less-seriously injured 40. Big Ben's weary captain, William Raborn, settled down with a court of inquiry to try to find...