Word: fatalities
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...leaguer of all time. Along the way, James explains why insulting nicknames, like that of Hugh ("Losing Pitcher") Mulcahy, tended to disappear in the '40s, how the coach's box evolved as an attempt to reduce violence in the days when baseball was a blood sport, and why the fatal beaning of Ray Chapman in 1920 may have done more than Babe Ruth to usher in the modern long-ball era. (Because of Chapman's death, the owners replaced the traditionally scuffed, dirty baseballs with shiny new ones that could be seen better--and hit farther. Rabbit was not ; added...
...former Secretary of State William Rogers, discovered NASA itself was deeply flawed. Far from representing the best of American know-how, the twelve-member commission found, NASA had become a bureaucracy that had lost its way. Before the first shuttle was launched, the agency had known of the fatal seal problem but had buried it under a blizzard of paper while permitting schedule-conscious managers to keep the orbiters flying. In retrospect, it began to seem, the Challenger tragedy was all but inevitable...
...these fatal procedural flaws be corrected? Rogers is trying to protect his commission's proposals against premature disclosure. "These are for the President," he told his commissioners. Still, some recommendations seem almost obvious. NASA headquarters must take firm control of its sprawling agency, even while cutting back on its paper flow. Anyone in the system holding a strong view on a safety problem must feel free to raise it at any level, rather than being limited to his own reporting channel...
James Butler ("Wild Bill") Hickok was holding aces and eights when Jack McCall shot him point-blank during a poker game in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. The fatal date was Aug. 2, 1876. Hickok did not have a chance to draw for either a full house or his life. The bullet went in the left side of his head and came out through his right cheek, leaving a crosslike exit mark. Pete Dexter's novel is packed with grisly details (the severed head of an outlaw, the emergency treatment of gunshot wounds and syphilis), although not all agree with history. McCall...
Smaller plastic items are frequently mistaken for prey by turtles and birds, often with fatal results. Leatherback turtles, which feast on jellyfish, are particularly attracted to plastic bags. Says University of Florida Zoologist Archie Carr, an authority on sea turtles: "Any kind of film or semitranslucent material appears to look like jellyfish to them." Trouble is, the bags--or other plastic items like golf tees--can form a lethal plug in the turtle's digestive tract...