Word: big
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that even a big salvage firm had given up as too dangerous-and neither Deir nor Little was a professional salvage man. Both were from Holland, Va. and had been machinists with a heavy construction outfit. They heard of the wreck of the African Queen, decided to go after her, quit their jobs, brought in two more partners who put up money, and hired four helpers, who joined them later on the African Queen. Due mostly to the tremendous persistence and ingenuity of Lloyd Deir, they brought the African Queen to port-but only after six dramatic months of adventure...
...Derelict. Starting out, the salvagers swung by ropes from the high-riding forward deckhouse to the after superstructure, examined the derelict, decided to pump sea water from the ship's big tanks and replace it with enough compressed air to float the Queen. A diver went down, looked at the gaping holes in the starboard side; they ranged down as far as 46 ft. Lloyd Deir decided the team would need a prefabricated patch to cover the holes. It would have to be of three-eighths-inch steel, 20 ft. by 30 ft., weighing eleven tons. Deir...
...this year, there was no avoiding the most humiliating and face-losing necessity of all: public revision of the inflated 1958 production claims. With only five weeks to go until the tenth anniversary of Communist power in China, Peking was obliged to admit to the world that the big leap had fallen painfully short, and that production goals for 1959 had been sharply reduced (see chart...
...Gambit. The men responsible for the big stumble did not suffer. Mao Tse-tung retained the all-powerful chairmanship of the Communist Party, and, though he did step down as chief of state, he was replaced by Organization Man Liu. But there were scapegoats. Three weeks ago, 200 middle-echelon planners and administrators, who were guilty of accurately predicting the failure of the big leap, were dismissed from their posts...
...foreign imperialists" were threatening peace-loving China. It was a hoary gambit, especially for Peking. In 1950 the Communists had helped consolidate their initial conquest of China by intervention in Korea. The bombardment of Quemoy in 1958 had helped reconcile China's masses to the strains of the big leap. Now, to divert attention from its failure, Peking could point to the bloody revolt in Tibet, Indian "aggression" along the Tibetan frontier, and "the plot of the U.S. imperialists" in Laos...