Word: direness
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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...
...close the holes, Carew has four different stances, two for lefthanded pitchers, two for righthanded pitchers. His varying postures at the plate break with baseball tradition. Batters generally tinker with their stances only when in the dire despond of an extended slump; Carew alters his to fit the pitcher and the pitching tactics. Whatever his stance, it is taken as deep in the batter's box as he can get. If opposing catchers are not wary, he will move so deep that his left foot is completely-and illegally-out of the box. Says Carew: "The further back...
...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...