Word: dire
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...about the tower from the start. It was designed by Bridge Builder Gustave Eiffel in a competition for the Paris Exposition of 1889, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution (among the losing ideas: an oversized guillotine, a giant garden sprinkler poised over the city). There were dire predictions that the structure would attract lightning and somehow kill all the fish in the Seine. Builder Eiffel displayed his disdain for doomsayers by working and entertaining guests in an apartment he had constructed at the top. He was right: heavy storms scarcely sway the tower, and winds pass through...
...weeks before the new ordinations, Pope Paul issued dire warnings no fewer than three times. At a weekly audience last month, he pointedly stated that "Jesus himself admits the possibility of excluding from fraternal communion" anyone who threatens the unity of the church. On June 20 the Pope sent the archbishop a personal, handwritten letter beseeching him to obey Rome. At a ceremony to install new cardinals, just two days before the ordinations, Paul issued his final plea. "Our predecessors, to whose discipline he presumes to appeal," Paul said, "would not have tolerated a disobedience as obstinate...
Every state in the Union is in dire need of a "king of the referendum" such as the North Dakotans are blessed with in the person of Millionaire Robert McCarney [June 13]. He saved his state's taxpayers some $200 million...
...Other dire fears of last winter have also disappeared. A shortage of fertilizer had seemed likely because large quantities of natural gas are needed to make it, and a Government survey found manufacturers' inventories to be low. But the survey did not count the inventories of wholesalers and retailers, who had built record stocks. Farmers this year have enough fertilizer to enable them to produce huge crops (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS...
...Patricia DIRe and William Merrill in the Ellot House Library...