Word: flare
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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There is a chance that, before it reaches this end of the trail, the sun will flare up as a "nova" or new star, increasing in brightness some 200,000 times. So many novae have been spotted in the sky that astronomers believe every normal star may have an outburst at least once in its lifetime. The star may return to its ordinary state and continue its evolution, but if the sun flared up it would vaporize every planet in the solar system. This might happen at any time. However, since the sun has ten billion years...
Disguised as Mexican policemen, 20 men armed with Tommy guns broke into the patio of an isolated Coyoacán villa one night last week. They overpowered five guards, threw an incendiary bomb into the patio, and in the light of its flare proceeded to shoot up all the rooms giving on the courtyard. Then they went inside the house and, standing outside the master's bedroom door, whaled 300 rounds through it. After five minutes of incessant firing, the attackers made off, and Mexico's most famous exile, Leon Trotsky, rose with his wife from the floor...
Before dawn one morning last week a bomber of the Royal Air Force glided in over the Stavanger airport, only big field in craggy Norway's west. Down went a magnesium flare and, in a few moments, up in a great bang and blaze went chunks of concrete runways, hangars and transport planes. For 80 minutes an undetermined number of ships of the British Fleet several miles off shore hurled an infernal amount of steel and high explosive onto the Stavanger field, while Allied bombers attacked at Trondheim to ground Nazi planes there. The British ships got away before...
Through the red flare of the Tragic Era, while Andrew Johnson was being laid on the cross and Philadelphian Jay Cooke, financier of the Civil War, was riding to ruin in the panic of 1873, J. P. Morgan walked cool and incisive, supremely confident of the future of America. At 32 he whipped Dan Drew, Jim Fisk and Jay Gould in their attempt to loot the Albany & Susquehanna R. R., saw its stock climb from $18 to $118 when he lifted the road out of receivership. It was his first real fight. Before gaudy Jim Fisk had left the Wall...
...moan from anyone now. In a minute we were all cracking jokes and shaking hands. The steward and I thumped each other on the backs, and when the next flare went up I saw that his face was wreathed in smiles...