Word: flighting
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...technological and scientific powerhouse, its universities nurturing geniuses like Einstein, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, whose discoveries changed the way we thought of, well, everything. Then came the carnage of World War I, the rise of fascism and communism, the mass murder of European Jews and the flight of those who could escape it, often to the U.S. All of this contributed to a shift of the center of scientific progress away from Europe. Some aspects of the great European disaster might have been foreseeable in 1909, but none with any certainty. There are too many futures for them...
...neighbor on the flight is chatty. When I ask why he's going to Harare, he tells me he is an investor. I'm curious. Zimbabwe's economy has collapsed. The government of President Robert Mugabe has destroyed the country's currency. Several million people need food aid, millions more have fled, and an outbreak of cholera - that sure mark of destitution - has killed close to 5,000 and infected 20 times that number in the past year. What's to buy in Zimbabwe? "Graves," my neighbor replies. "Private cemeteries. Other places, I'll do minerals, farms, forests...
...world's first manned balloon flight took place on Nov. 21, 1783, in Paris. The balloon was blue and gold and 70 ft. (about 20 m) tall. It had no basket. You rode on a kind of circular balcony that hung around the balloon's neck like a collar. This meant that there had to be two passengers, for balance, and they had to stay on opposite sides of the balloon at all times. The two men in question were Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, a young doctor who was exactly as dashing as he sounds...
...country. The news for days ran footage of "voluntary" confessions by local citizens led astray by foreign elements, the latter typically Iranians operating out of the U.K. (the British had been cast as the lead villain this time around). As a kharaji, or foreigner, who had arrived on a flight from London shortly before the vote, I fit the profile of the state's narrative too well. The machinery had little choice but to check up on me, its logic dictating the visits by paired government men curious to know what an "Iranian-American with a foreign accent...
...Tehran and three weeks after Iranian intelligence had come around looking for me, I was taking no chances. The notes, essays and photos on the protests I had been regularly sending back for publication would have to be sent to the States separately ... with my grandma. She had a flight to the U.S. one month after mine and, although the training manuals at Langley likely do not recommend it, I spent the better part of my final days in the Islamic Republic debating whether or not to convince my own grandmother to discreetly include a pair of flash drives with...