Word: channelized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Looking like a seal and feeling mighty seasick, U.S. Frogman Fred Baldasare, 38, lumbered from the Dover surf into the arms of his frisky German fiancee with a new record of sorts: he was the first man to swim the English Channel underwater. For 18 hr. 1 min. the former U.S. Army film director submarined along 15 feet beneath the surface, accompanied by a launch and encased in a steel cage that kept the aqualunged swimmer from drifting off course. Said the feisty Floridian, who prepped for his 22-mile swim by traversing the Straits of Messina's Scylla...
...nine centuries, since William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings, the English Channel has stood as the "moat defensive'' between Britain and her foes, between the "blessed plot" and the "envy of less happier lands." Today, Paris-London jets pass over the Channel tides in three minutes; nuclear missiles would blast across in as many seconds. The balance of envy has changed. Increasingly prosperous Britons, who swarm across to the Continent by the thousands each summer, return with European notions of comfort, elegance and efficiency that have breached England's insularity more surely than any invader...
...Channel is no longer a moat, it is more than a memory. In the missile age, as in the Middle Ages, it is still the demarcation line of British sovereignty, the symbol of differences in law and language, attitudes and institutions that have historically separated Englishmen from Europeans-and mingled their blood on countless European battlefields. "The English," it is said, "are always willing to die for foreigners-but not to live with them...
This month, some 400 years since Britain was driven from her last French possession, the island nation approaches the climax of a historic effort to vault the Channel and bind her fortunes indissolubly to those of the new, united, booming Western Europe. This decision will deeply affect Britain's relations with 724 million Commonwealth citizens. Britons who want to remember the sails of Drake and Raleigh, and the balance sheets that once followed the flag around the world, are being asked to turn their backs on what little remains of the Empire and to abandon (or so many believe...
...cries of "betrayal" from Sydney and Ottawa, Macmillan's men reply that Britain can best lead the Commonwealth from within the Common Market, where she can help to lower tariffs, pare discriminatory internal taxes, and channel Europe's fast-growing investment funds to underdeveloped nations. The only alternative to Britain's membership, as Macmillan, Heath & Co. see it, would be to relinquish all claims to big-power status and resign herself, like 18th century Venice, to continued isolation and impoverishment...