Word: cline
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...terms were introduced into the English languages deme. taxon (1950) and cline (1939) became the property of evolutionists. It was a time when Lamarckianism--the belief that acquired traits could be passed on to offspring--was finally discarded. It was a time when experimental biology replaced descriptive biology as the status science. It was a time when the study of anatomy, morphology, ecology was dropped from college curricula because it was not experimental enough, and evolutionary biology almost died here at Harvard. It was, finally, the last chapter of the Darwinian Revolution...
...Vegas Police Sergeant Robert Hilliard was not impressed by Cline's story. Checking the charred upper floors in the 30-story building after the fire was put out, he found trays and dishes still in the halls. A small point, perhaps, but, concluded Hilliard, "Cline wasn't doing his job, or he wasn't telling the truth." Cline was questioned again and given a lie-detector test. Said Police Lieut. John Connor: "He failed miserably." Finally, Cline signed a statement admitting to a far more sordid story: he had been engaged in a homosexual...
Unconvinced that the fire started all that accidentally, police charged Cline with arson and eight homicides. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death...
...retired Air Force master sergeant, Cline had dropped out of high school in Sunnymead, Calif. He was placed in a home for juvenile delinquents when, his father said, "I was overseas, and the wife couldn't handle him." Cline was under psychiatric care in California from 1973 to 1975, then began to drift across the U.S. He worked for a time as a busboy at the MGM Grand Hotel but is not thought to have set the fire there that killed 84 people last Nov. 21. Since the MGM blaze, Las Vegas has had two other hotel fires...
According to officials, there were three other fires at the Hilton in addition to the one that Cline admits having started. After the main fire was under control, others broke out in quick succession in a second-floor linen closet, a third-floor service elevator lobby and in a ninth-floor fire hose, which had been cut open, stuffed with paper and ignited. Cline has been charged with setting only the eighth-floor fire but is being quizzed about the others...