Word: clue
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Reasonable Possibility. The first uranium explosions produced secondary neutrons, which in turn seemed capable of touching off uranium atoms, which would yield more neutrons, and so on. This "chain reaction" looked like the clue to a large-scale release of atomic energy., France's Joliot-Curie did in fact produce a chain reaction, but it died out after a few cycles (TIME, Feb. 12, 1940). The problem was to start one which would not dwindle but multiply...
...Russians promoted the Union on the eve of the Big Three parley? London's Daily Herald offered a clue. The Big Three, it reported, will discuss a common administrative policy for all Germany and an overall German government under Allied control. In any such discussion, Generalissimo Stalin would be way ahead of the game. His part of Germany was the only one with ready-made political parties and a program on which the new Reich might be built...
...personal canvass of voters in each constituency immediately after the election campaign opens, again in the middle of the campaign, and finally just before voting. On polling day, it is customary for checkers at the polling booths to ask each voter for his polling number, which gives a clue to his name and address in the electoral register. These checkers often find out from the voter whom he has voted for. The ballot is secret, but many voters, especially Laborites, are quite willing to reveal their vote. Estimates based on this method have proved wrong in the past, but seldom...
Urge to Self-Punishment. A murderer, he observes, almost invariably leaves at least one revealing clue. This is no accident: every murderer, however brutal, seems to be driven by an unconscious compulsion to betray himself, to punish himself for his crime. The more cautious he is, the more certain he is to make a misstep; some criminologists say that the hardest murder to solve is a completely impulsive...
...better clue to Francisco Franco's political health than the scare bulletins emanating from Spanish émigré groups in Paris, London and Mexico City was a brief announcement from the British Foreign Office: Lord Templewood (Sir Samuel Hoare), Britain's ambassador to Spain, is going home. Lord Templewood, long hated as an appeaser by Laborites, leftists and liberals, has skated over the thin ice of Anglo-Spanish relations since 1940. "At that time," said the Foreign Office, "it was expected [his] mission would be of short duration. But in the ensuing years situations arose which made...