Word: dourness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...only railroad of any size owned and operated by the U. S. Government* is the Alaska Railroad, 500 miles long, finished in 1923, running from coastal Seward to the biggest city in Alaska's interior, gold-mining Fairbanks (pop. 2,101). A dour, 69-year-old, spectacled, Republican Swede named Otto Frederick Ohlson is its top man. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, who has jurisdiction over A. R. R., does not oust Ohlson from his $14,500 job because in eleven years Republican Ohlson has reduced its annual operating deficit from $1,000,000 to the break-even...
This quality dour Alphonso Taft brought down from the dour uplands of Vermont in the 1830s. Grandfather Taft, Yale '33, looking for a quiet, middle-class town in which to practice law (his goal: yearly income of $3,000 to $5,000), was much taken with Cincinnati. There he lived abstemiously, labored industriously, austerely chose himself a Vermont bride. Fanny Phelps died after bearing him five children (three died in childhood) ; and after due consideration, Grandfather Taft chose happy, loving Louise Torrey, who bore him four sons and a daughter. Second of these sons was William Howard Taft, Yale...
Last March Imperial Airways, then run by dour Sir John Reith, tersely announced that its flying boat Corsair had made a forced landing in the Belgian Congo, "but all aboard are safe." Last week, uninformative Sir John having become British Minister of Information, and the Corsair having returned to Great Britain, the story of its African saga was told...
Rough as thistle and dour as dominie's broadcloth is the Scottish Presbyterian who last week took over as Great Britain's Minister of Information. No government but Britain's would put direct wartime control of newspapers and newspapermen in the hands of a man who hates newspapers and newspapermen as much as does Sir John Charles Walsham Reith. He is said once to have had a reporter fired for flying an airplane over the Reith house to take pictures. In one of his rare interviews he flatly declared that he never looked at a newspaper...
...tents at Broadway's dingy St. James Theatre for four nights. This time it showed Manhattan's dance fans two new U. S.-made ballets: 1) Charade, an intricate, tasty bit of choreographic icing by husky Dancer Lew Christensen; 2) City Portrait, a dour tenement-street pantomime choreographed by Dancer Eugene Loring. Dance critics liked Charade's tricky trip ping and whimsey, found City Portrait somewhat incoherent. But Kirstein 's home made ballet, like Finland's home-made army, appeared able to hold its own against the Russian product...