Word: blink
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...galaxy, about 25,000 light-years from its center. Technically, the astronomers can only see what no longer exists, or rather what existed 25,000 years ago, when the radio waves they observe left the galaxy's center. But in cosmological time, 25,000 years is only the blink of an eye, and astronomers, faced with the huge intervals of space, use light-years as simple measures of distance...
...later when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Rome. In a short, vicious fight, 147 Swiss were killed, successfully defending Clement VII. The guard has not fought another major battle, but ever since has set itself such Spartan, fiercely loyal standards that even a U.S. Marine drill instructor might blink...
...have most often happened to people who watch eclipses of the sun without protecting their eyes. Rabbits were chosen as the test animals. AEC scientists found that an explosion the size and height of Teak delivers its thermal energy in less time than a rabbit (or a man) can blink. Said the report grimly: "Retinal burns were produced in the rabbits at distances up to 300 nautical miles." This tended to support earlier Army research indicating that an atomic fireball bursting over a battlefield at night could produce mass blindness in soldiers scattered over a vast area...
...face, which she can work like a rubber mask, turns from sunny to sad, from Harlequin to Columbine, with imperceptible art. Her lips can tremble like a child's on the verge of tears or curl with three-martini irony; her blue eyes can blink in puppy-dog innocence or wink in complicity with all the world. Perhaps her most typical expression is that of a pixy hooked on happy pills, but she can also look like a small kitten that has just swallowed a very large canary, a waif who has lost her bus ticket home, a country...
...countrymen the stature of a stern father-awe-inspiring, sometimes overrigid, the living symbol of righteous and unshakable purpose. But, though the public has seldom seen it, there is an obverse side to Adenauer's character: a nagging, emotional mistrustfulness that can convert him in the blink of an eye to a man of angry impulse. Last week Konrad Adenauer, 83, gave full rein to his impulsiveness and by doing so flawed an unsurpassed international reputation for rock-like consistency...