Word: blasts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...band of Zwicky's colleagues). Brilliant young Theoretical Physicist Richard Feynman is a master at breaking lock and safe combinations (during World War II, he made the rounds of Los Alamos safes, depositing "Guess who?" notes in them). In his spare time, Nobel Chemist Linus Pauling likes to blast away at the souped-up claims of advertisers (he once completely deflated a popular chlorophyll deodorant by proving that instead of killing a smell, the stuff merely paralyzed the nose). But on matters affecting the institute, individualism melts into unity. On one occasion, a visiting professor from a Midwest university...
...like that last week when reporters first visited the village on Yucca Flat built to test the effect of an atomic blast. The reporters, who had waited 13 days for the explosion and another day to see what had happened, were primed to be shocked. They had seen the fireball dwarf the tiny village on the desert (three houses can be seen in the lower right corner of the picture above ), watched a train of dust follow the shock wave across the desert, felt its punch eight miles away...
...when they arrived at the village, they first noticed what had survived. A reinforced cinder-block house and another made of precast concrete slabs still stood, less than a mile from the blast. One iso-ft. guyed radio tower was erect. A 15,4000-gal. tank of liquefied petroleum gas was intact; only its handrail was bent. Shelves of groceries seemed unharmed. A power substation was 95% operable. The telephone system showed little damage. The blast had blown out fires that had been started by the searing heat of the explosion. Underground gas lines to houses less than a mile...
Harold L. Goodwin, test operations director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, said that anyone within one mile of the blast would have been killed by radiation or flying debris. A few people in deep bomb shelters might have survived, but even two miles from the blast injuries would have been serious and few would have escaped...
Kismet is only one indication of a British theater boom this season. Despite a 25% increase in the price of theater tickets since 1939, attendance is up by at least 30%. In London's West End, 42 playhouses are running full blast; 100 repertory companies are operating in principal cities; 40 touring companies play one-night to two-week stands in the provinces, and 50 touring revues and dozens of variety bills rove the nation...