Word: bomb
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ghastly though it was, the Atlanta explosion had the perverse virtue of being clear-cut terrorism: an obvious bomb, identifiable victims, even fingerprints to dust for. Those caught up in the tragedy of TWA 800, which fell into the sea killing all 230 aboard, lacked such certainties. Grieving relatives wanted to take home their deceased. The U.S. Government and much of the general public wanted to know whether one of America's commercial airliners had been blown out of the sky by terrorists. These questions, during a grueling and sometimes chaotic week, seemed at times incompatible--urgencies with different priorities...
...quickly yielded only a tantalizing enigma: what Francis called a "fraction-of-a-second sound" 111/2 minutes into the flight, followed by silence. This tiny glitch of noise reinforced the notion--privately held by many government officials almost from the beginning--that Flight 800 was brought down by a bomb or even a missile. During a Friday- afternoon news conference, Francis revealed that the NTSB was consulting with investigators of what proved to be bombings of an Air India jet in 1985 and of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 to see if the sounds...
...very much what Atlanta, and the world, is facing now, as the magic that was supposed to surround the Centennial Games was undone in two moments, when a plane suddenly plunged and when a strong shuddering left every flag hanging at half-staff. It takes only a small bomb, and anxieties run like a fuse. After the explosion in the dead of night, every tremble became an aftershock. A volunteer touched a microphone, and everybody jumped. A box of paper on the floor prompted worried looks. As people looked over their shoulders, a shiver led to a global disquiet...
Most often the bomb threats don't pan out, he says, but each one has to be taken seriously...
...Bomb blasts around the world, from Saudi Arabia to Long Island to Atlanta, have rocked the nation. Citizens across the country are beginning to realize that terrorism is not a phenomenon limited to the rest of the world. Harvard University, in fact, might be an excellent target, with its high-profile and easy access. And the community is left to wonder...Crimson/File Photo...