Word: gal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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While workers were preparing to transfer 20,000 gal. of liquid propane gas from a derailed tank car to trucks in Waverly, Tenn., the gas suddenly exploded, leveling 14 buildings. "It was just like you were thrown into a furnace," said Truck Driver Carl Stokes, who was burned severely. "It was like a power throwing us into the sun. People were walking, their clothes were gone and their bodies were completely burned." The toll: twelve dead and at least 50 injured...
Even more slippery than Michigan's horse thieves, surely, are the Los Angeles truck drivers who swipe 55-gal. drums of used grease-about $25,000 worth each week-from local restaurants and drive-ins. The goo, worth $40 per bbl., is valuable because it is reprocessed into a food additive that causes cattle and poultry to gain weight. The thieves have oozed up across the nation, but most actively in Southern California, the fastness of fast food. Sometimes posing as legitimate grease collectors, they have cut chains placed on the outdoor grease barrels, smashed through protective iron gates...
...attentive reportorial methods to keep himself and his story firmly planted on the icy ground. He carefully provides the dimensions of the Yukon River cabins he visits, often numbering and describing the items of furniture in them. He lists some 30 uses that Alaskans have found for 55-gal. drums, describes how contemporary miners pan for gold and tells how to operate a dog sled up a hill. The dozens of Alaskans he sought out and listened to come trailing clouds of particulars. McPhee can capture a character with the economy of a good short story writer: "Harry...
...models, but most good wood-burners deliver at least 60% of the fuel's potential in terms of heat-which is comparable to an oil burner. In terms of heating capacity, however, a cord of hardwood burned in a sound stove will deliver as much heat as 166 gal. of #2 fuel oil (Massachusetts price: about 48? per gal.), or 6,290 kilowatt hours of electricity (about $330 worth), or 264 therms of natural gas ($97). No wonder Americans are returning to their old flame...
...Lindbergh did not consider it unusual when he had to bail out for varied reasons: colliding with another plane in a sham combat attack over Texas; running out of fuel in a fog near Chicago when no one told him that his 120-gal. gasoline tank had been replaced with an 80-gal. tank; losing sight of the ground in a storm in those preradio years and finding his only field-illuminating flare had failed. He wrote that he had accepted his job as chief pilot on the St. Louis-Chicago mail route "with the understanding that each pilot...