Word: breakthroughs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Toiling in an arcane area that totally baffles most ordinary mortals, mathematicians usually despair of even trying to explain their work to laymen. Yet recently two University of Illinois mathematicians announced a breakthrough of such widespread interest that even the reticent American Mathematical Society issued a rare press release. The news: after more than a century of futile brain racking, one of mathematics' most famous teasers-the so-called four-color conjecture-has finally been proved...
...Namibia by Aug. 31, 1976, or face U.N. economic sanctions. Accordingly, South Africa assembled a constitutional conference in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, and last month the conference agreed on a multiracial interim government to prepare for independence on Dec. 31, 1978. Kissinger rightly called the decision "a major breakthrough" because "the principle of independence has now been accepted." Black African states were still not satisfied, however, because of the two-year delay, the lack of U.N.-supervised free elections, and because the South West African Peoples' Organization (SWAPO), the territory's most powerful political organization, was not represented...
RUBBER. The breakthrough in the 16-week strike by 60,000 members of the United Rubber Workers came after a 70-hour bargaining marathon, when union negotiators and Firestone agreed to a new pay package giving workers a 36% increase in wages and benefits over three years. The Firestone agreement, which will set the pattern for the other struck members of rubber's Big Four (Goodyear, Goodrich and Uniroyal), will boost the industry's average hourly wage in the first year by 880, to $6.38 an hour. In addition, the rubber workers got an escalator that provides...
...husband-wife team? Might that not be carrying nepotism a bit far? And would it not be the wrong way for women to score the breakthrough? Still, the thought of Vice President Betty, tossing off refreshingly candid and sensible thoughts about almost anything, is intriguing. Too bad Ronald Reagan, so eager to jolt the nomination race open with a startling vice-presidential choice, did not try to unify the party with Betty. For that matter, imagine that Jimmy Carter, in a mood of bipartisan unity and love, had selected Betty. That twosome might well have won the White House...
...enough wavering Ford supporters and uncommitted delegates seemed ripe for plucking: the large Northeast delegations of New York (154 votes), New Jersey (67) and Schweiker's home, Pennsylvania (103). The gamble will keep the Reagan candidacy more or less alive, but it signally failed to produce that needed breakthrough...