Word: deserting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fanatics knocked its nose off, Greeks scrawled graffiti on its paws and Mamluk soldiers used its face as a rifle target. But the saddest indignity suffered over the centuries by Egypt's Great Sphinx of Giza has stemmed from erosion, seemingly caused by a single enemy-the relentless desert wind. At the present rate of decay, experts say, the 64-foot-high figure could be reduced to a mound of dust in five to ten centuries...
Salts occur naturally in the Sphinx's limestone. Because of the hot days and relatively cool nights of the desert, water in the air condenses and dissolves the salts lying near the surface of the statue. When the salts crystallize again, they crack pores within the stone. In recent years, scientists agree, the salt damage has been accelerated by the Aswan High Dam, more than 400 miles upriver. The new dam has raised the water table throughout the Nile Valley. Another villain has been the high-salt mortar used to restore the flaking monument. "Walking...
They thought they could do it. All their calculations told them they could do it. But it was not until 5:30 a.m., Monday, July 16, 1945, that they were sure. Then, in a flash that illuminated the New Mexico desert for miles around, the atomic era began, and J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of Los Alamos scientists realized that they had pulled off the most astonishing scientific achievement of the century. Only later did they truly comprehend the extent to which they had released an evil genie from its bottle that neither they, nor anyone else, could ever...
...night long, the hot Santa Ana winds swept out of the Mojave Desert, gusting through communities south of Los Angeles at speeds topping 60 m.p.h. In Anaheim, just before dawn, the high winds blew down a power line, setting the fronds of a palm tree afire. Sparks showered onto the dry wooden shingles of a nearby rooftop, which exploded into flames. Sped by the winds, the sparks leaped from roof to roof, from street to street. For three hours, the fire raged out of control as residents in a four-block area of apartment complexes scrambled out of its path...
...carefully executed operation by the Israeli armed forces, the holdouts were removed without any deaths or serious injuries. Bulldozers continued to dismantle most of the last signs of the Israeli occupation-the buildings, streets, even the palm trees and vegetable gardens that the Israelis had planted in the desert. Two days later, on Sunday, April 25, the white and blue flag bearing the Star of David was lowered at Sharm el Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai, bringing the Israeli occupation...