Word: bolts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Fans of Lightning Bolt flocked to T.T. the Bear’s Place last Saturday night, hoping they hadn’t forgotten their earplugs...
Tribal sympathies in Waziristan appear to lie with al-Qaeda. Moreover, it is a sacred duty among Pashtun residents to give sanctuary to Muslims seeking it. With its rugged terrain, its warrior tribes and its centuries-old hostility to authority, Waziristan is a fitting bolt-hole for Islamic militants, possibly even al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. U.S. intelligence believes he is hiding somewhere near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, 150 miles of which snake along Waziristan's frontier. Last week the Qatari TV network, al-Jazeera, aired a videotape of bin Laden walking with his lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri...
...this oft-told tale another Founders myth, like Washington's confessing to axing his father's cherry tree? The latest skepticism is voiced in a quirky new book, Bolt of Fate (Public Affairs), that calls the whole thing a hoax, echoing the spoofs Franklin confected for Poor Richard's Almanack. But author Tom Tucker's evidence is slim. He makes much of the improbability of flying a kite weighted down by a heavy key, ignoring Franklin's long history of kite flying, and of his delay in publicizing the experiment, though only three months elapsed. More to the point, scientific...
Franklin wasn't the first to propose a kinship between harmless sparks and a lightning bolt. But he was the first to suggest an experiment to prove it. The Royal Society of London published his proposal, yet it was the French who actually put it to the test. The experiment Franklin proposed, which he first revealed in a letter to his English agent in July 1750, called for installing on a high place, like a steeple, a sentry box with a metal pole extending from its roof. If an electrified storm cloud passed overhead, Franklin said, the pole--preferably sharpened...
Somewhere, there's a lesson in that for Europe's leaders. Meanwhile, a note to Real's marketing department: Ali Abbas needs a new shirt. --With reporting by Kristen Bolt...