Word: boxcar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Poet John Donne once listed "goe and catche a falling star" among life's impossible jobs. And Air Force Captain Harold E. Mitchell, who had been assigned the chore, last week had reason to agree: he had missed the week before. His specially equipped C-119 Flying Boxcar, patrolling a 12,000-sq.-mi. patch of the Pacific near Hawaii, had tried to snare Discoverer XIII's descending instrument capsule, coming from outer space, in midair. He almost caught it-but had to watch helplessly while the capsule fell to the ocean below, to be picked...
...train carried enough technical gear to stock a sophisticated physics laboratory. To test how the jolts, noises and vibrations of railroad travel will affect the warheaded Minuteman, sensitive oscilloscopes and oscillographs registered every rock and wriggle. Loudspeakers and telephones linked the communications HQ with the other ten cars (one boxcar that housed a jeep, two tank cars for water and diesel fuel, seven air-conditioned "quarters cars"-including one with stereo set, radio, TV). When the train stopped, crewmen stepped out and limbered up, but could wander no farther than 150 yards-earshot range. A sharp command from the single...
...regiment entrained for Florida, and Post caught his first glimpse of Teddy Roosevelt grinning from a boxcar door. T.R.'s uniform "looked as if he had slept in it-as it always did." For T.R.'s "personal press agent," famed Reporter Richard Harding Davis, Post conceived an immediate and lasting dislike: "Richard Harding Davis was busy conning his Social Register and keeping himself and his silk undies in perfect condition for the rigors of the coming campaign." In Florida, the men got an issue of .45-caliber training ammunition, which "could, properly directed, knock down...